Chuck’s Place: Black Swan—A Tragic Coming of Age

January 22, 2011 Chuck Leave a comment

Please note: If you have not seen the movie Black Swan yet, you may not want to read this blog until after you’ve seen the movie.

A ballerina, the epitome of elegant, feminine beauty and form is swallowed up by a lethal schizophrenic process. This is the story of Black Swan.

I draw from Black Swan the archetypal underpinnings of coming of age: nature’s call to greater individuation; separation from mother; encounter with the shadow; and, in this case, a maladaptive initiation into full adulthood.

No one can successfully traverse the gateway to adulthood without a deep encounter with his or her passionate nature. With adolescence comes the rumblings and fires of our awakening sensual, passionate, and sexual natures. These are the impulses that will draw us beyond home and family into new life, new roles, and a deeper connection to our passionate selves.

Families that may have securely housed our innocence and forged our ego discipline and control can no longer provide a home for our evolving passionate natures. We must loosen the nursery tie to our families and allow ourselves to become full passionate, sexual beings, an essential part of our adult selves.

This road to passionate self is fraught with danger. Our childhood goals, or those of our parents for us, may rest upon the repression and sublimation of nature’s fires, energy channeled to forge a successful education and career. In the case of Black Swan, the goal of premier ballerina was presided over by a mother whose single focus was her daughter’s success. We must acknowledge the pressure on our fledgling ballerina of her suffocating mother parasitically stealing her daughter’s life to vicariously realize her own frozen, frustrated dreams of stardom.

All this being true, the deeper challenge is the daughter’s ambivalence about letting go of the safety of the nursery and opening to the thunderous pulsations of her own nature that will forever separate her from the security of mother’s womb. To go deeper into life she will need to cut this infantile protective cord that, at this stage of life, can only serve to entomb her in lifeless security.

We all struggle with a tie to this enticing but devouring security, symbolized by the protective mother in this film. She is the mother that welcomes our regressive turning away from the deepening challenge of life, as we fall into stages of victimhood, entitlement and depression. She soothes and numbs for the price of our spirit. We must rally the hero within ourselves to be delivered from such a regressive vortex, to take on the adventure and responsibility of discovering and integrating our whole selves.

The mother I speak of is an internal image within us all. She is the mother we constellate when fearfully confronted by life, be it in the world or within the hidden recesses of our body and soul. If our ego balks at taking on the challenge before us we activate this apparent nurturing great mother to self soothe and protect us from our fears. However, if we cling to regression, this supportive mother becomes the devouring mother who fully takes us back into the womb of depression. In fact, she becomes the death instinct itself—nature reabsorbing life energy for its own purposes, a mother consuming her child’s life. Our ontogenic imperative insists we choose life and be willing to fight for it, refusing the comfort of the regressive call. All responsibility rests with the ego. The devouring mother is not the ultimate antagonist. She is the consequence of the ego’s refusal of the call into deeper life.

Our ballerina does begin to fend off her symbiotic mother, however, largely through the onset of a schizophrenic process. Her ego cannot directly loosen its attachment to mother, however, her shadow—that is, the repressed part of herself that houses her rejected feelings, needs, and impulses—begins to assert itself by taking over her personality with aggressive acts of resistance and defiance. Her ego and shadow remain diametrically opposed, unintegrated, contributing to her fragmented, hallucinatory process.

The artistic director serves as the protagonist to allow the ballerina direct access to her sexual nature, essential to fully embodying the dance of the black swan. This challenge is deepened by the real life addition to the ballet company of a woman who is the perfect mirror of her latent, repressed, sensual self: her shadow. What ensues is a relationship part delusional and part real as our ballerina struggles to alternately merge with and fend off her shadow. Merger is expressed graphically by her hunger to sexually unite with her shadow.

Jung was clear that our shadow is always presented or symbolized by a person of our own sex, as our shadow contains qualities of self that are fully realizable in our conscious personality. In this case, the female shadow symbolizes our ballerina’s full feminine self, including her sexual and sensual self. Sexual union with her shadow is the most appropriate symbol and experience of this deeper self-connection. To merge sexually with a man without being able to unite with her sexual self will not resolve true ownership and connection to her sexual nature. An unintegrated sexual shadow is a major struggle in the sexual lives of many adults.

The psychic divide between ego and shadow broadens and is maintained by a series of psychological defenses. Our ballerina’s major defense to maintain her child ego stronghold is that of perfection. She works ruthlessly to perfect her technique. After four years in the ballet company she is the most perfect ballerina. However, her perfection cannot incorporate the spontaneous, passionate impulse of her deep nature and she falls short of the fluidity needed to dance the black swan. She fortifies her perfection with anorexia and purging as she desperately controls and holds on to her child’s body.

Even more gruesomely disturbing is her defense of body mutilation, whether it be scratching her back until it bleeds, peeling skin from her fingers until they bleed, or ultimately stabbing herself with glass. These various forms of self-mutilation serve several defensive functions. On a very primitive level, blood letting provides a release of the supposed illness in the body. In the case of our ballerina, the shadow impulse is projected upon the blood, which is released through tearing the skin.

Furthermore, the ritual act of scratching or peeling skin, leading ultimately to skin penetration and bleeding, serves as a displacement of a sexual impulse into a more acceptable form to the child ego.

The painful experience of bodily mutilation serves another defense called identification with the aggressor. Here, through bodily mutilation, she is able to both punish herself for her sexual impulses and feel the strength and power of living out the role of the repressive punitive parent.

Finally, I propose an archetypal basis for bodily mutilation present in all initiation rites of “primitive” societies. Initiation rites serve the societal and deep psychological function of ushering the initiate from childhood into adulthood. Wounding has always assumed a central role in initiation rites and shamanic journeys. The wound loosens the ego’s grip upon the familiar and the initiate is opened to a greater reality, presenting new possibilities to be incorporated into the existing sense of self. These ancient rites and journeys are also dangerous times, as initiates are subjected to energetic intensities that could easily result in “loss of soul” (schizophrenia in modern terms), or death. Hence, the caution of having elders other than the parents of the initiate overseeing and guiding is instrumental to this transformative ritual.

Our modern rational world has, unfortunately, lost its connection to these rituals, but the impulse to be initiated emerges spontaneously and misguidedly, in many cases of self-mutilation or fashionable body piercings. Through the loss of guided ritual, the modern world has required the developing ego of every individual to assume responsibility for accomplishing self-initiation. This deeper journey of initiation may be delayed, becoming instead a lifelong struggle to individuate. In fact, we may have a society of largely uninitiated adults. The far greater challenge of our time may be for the would-be initiate to defensively hold together the highly pressurized opposing energies within psyche and soma to allow for a lengthy individuation process, resulting finally in full adult initiation.

As our ballerina inches closer to opening night, her efforts to make contact with and unite with her shadow self become increasingly more dangerous and delusional. Even the moviegoer has trouble discerning which scenes are real and which are pure hallucination. Here lies, perhaps, the greatest failed defense: a full-blown schizophrenic process. I call it a failed defense because it serves to keep all the sub-personalities separate, at the cost of a central organizing factor: the ego.

The transition from late adolescence to early adulthood is one of the most vulnerable times in the life cycle for the onset of schizophrenia. The demands of adult roles, as well as the encounter with the shadow self, can shatter the personality into fragmented pieces like an earthquake creating new fault lines in the earth.

Only a conscious personality, able to loosen its hold on the child ego state, can allow nature to bring forth the deeper sensual self and make the transition into mature adulthood without serious damage. No wonder the initiation rites of yesteryear were so prominent in all societies.

In the case of our ballerina, though she completes the dance of both sides of the swan, white and black, they remain separate, unintegrated entities within herself and though the movie ends somewhat speculatively, to me, she went to her death having lived more fully in a fragmented way, but certainly not as a whole, integrated being.

Nature insists we move along the life cycle. This first major bridge, from child to adult, in coming of age, needs to be appreciated at a much deeper level in our modern world.

If you wish to correspond, please feel free to post a comment below.

Until we meet again,
Chuck

Jan's Blog

A Day in a Life: Experience as a Path

January 19, 2011 Jan 2 Comments

As I write today, we are again immersed in frozen winter weather in the Northeast, a time that offers a most singular experience, forcing us to curtail our activities and deal with its impact, which can suddenly and unrelentingly take over, causing devastation and undesirable change. It is at times like these that I realize how insignificant we are in the path of nature.

I find myself of no importance as I face the snow and ice, the downed limbs and power lines, and as I battle to clear our driveway, scrape the ice off our cars, and keep our house warm. We don’t really matter to nature, and yet we are part of it. This is, as I see it, the same message from the shaman’s world, the world of the seers that asks us to accept our insignificance, to lose our self-importance, yet to utilize and value our experiences. How do we reconcile that dilemma, the idea that we are insignificant with the idea that we are here in our lives to have incredible experiences? How do we make sense of this conundrum?

For the past ten years I have been immersing myself in the shaman’s world; specifically, but not limited to, the world of the seers of ancient Mexico as described by Carlos Castaneda. I came into the seer’s world by intent, I believe, intent that I set long before I was even conscious, nature at its most basic. But my life’s challenge was to gain enough awareness, by becoming fully present in this world, by becoming increasingly open to seeing that everything I experience in this life may not be what I, at first, think or perceive.

My true introduction into the seer’s world really began when I first met Chuck Ketchel, though, as I have mentioned in previous blogs, I had read and felt an intense resonance with the early books of Castaneda when I was in my early twenties. It was not until I was ready, however, that the seers’ world really opened up for me, or perhaps that I opened up to it.

In the beginning, I admit, I was somewhat skeptical about the seer’s world, though never reluctant to explore its meaning or the possibilities it offered. I was ready and I met the right person to introduce me to a way of viewing life and life’s experiences from another perspective. In learning about this world of the seers, I learned that the experiences I had previously had were the necessary foundations for taking a journey of intelligent and complicated growth. My continued experiences are equally necessary, if I am to lose my self-importance and face my own insignificance, as well as my death.

Of course, this is a very personally resonant journey that I am on, and I know that not everyone will find what they seek in the seer’s world. There are many other paths that run parallel to this experiential world of the seers and I have a strong connection to some of them, having also been deeply immersed in yoga and meditation, and having had paranormal and psychic experiences my entire life. But even those paths and strange experiences became clearer, began to make greater sense to me, as I continued my voyage into the world of the seers of ancient Mexico, for I found that the seers offered explanations for experiences and encounters that I could not find explanations for anywhere else. Other paths and modalities did not offer the fuller picture that I have felt so resonantly in the seer’s world, often dismissing or avoiding the deeper healing that I have gone through as I engaged in the processes of recapitulation. The seer’s world gave me a new understanding of life from the experiential perspective.

I was never a religious person, but I have always been a spiritual person. Although raised a Catholic, taught by nuns, I knew at an early age that there was no resonance in the rhetoric and teachings of the catechism or the dictates of that paternal organization. Even at the age of seven I knew I was a doubter, that I could neither uphold nor fit into the Catholic mold. Perhaps with that knowing I unconsciously set the intent for future experiences that went far beyond the world of parochial education and expectations.

I have learned more fully, especially over the past ten years, that our singular journeys hold all we need to evolve, in our experiences. Our experiences are showing us what we need to learn, as they provide us with exactly the challenges that will move us beyond our present incarnation. In the seer’s world, I have found indescribable release from the dictates of a world that never quite made sense to me.

I have also found that my years of discipline in yoga and meditation serve me well in the seer’s world, and are in fact deeply utilized in that world—though different terms are used, the principles and practices are the same. The Buddhist principles of the middle way, of detachment, and gaining enlightenment are also deeply entrenched in the seer’s world. In the seer’s world all of these things, and many more that I may not even be aware of, are given credence and value. Everything is given a place in the seer’s world, without judgment, yet at the same time we are constantly presented with not attaching to any of them. The seers expect us to fully live our lives, embrace our experiences, and yet never forget that we are going to move beyond this world.

As I look out the window now and see the cold white snow and ice, I understand this concept, this dilemma more clearly. For what the seers present to us is the truth of nature—it is what it is—and we can do nothing about it, except accept that we are here and be impeccable in how we choose to live in this world, how we choose to face oncoming time, winter included, death included, as well as all the experiences that nature affords us. For yes, we are beings who are going to die, but in the meantime we are forces of nature that cannot do otherwise than live in this world. And yes, I have more snow and ice to shovel!

If we choose a path of experience, perhaps we will not only advance ourselves, but offer a new kind of challenge to those around us: to advance and evolve as well.

If you wish, feel free to share or comment in the Post Comment section below.

Sending you all love and good wishes,
Jan

Messages from Jeanne

#742 Begin a Practice of Navigation

January 17, 2011 Jan 1 Comment

Written by Jan Ketchel and including a channeled message from Jeanne Ketchel.

It’s very early on a cold winter morning as I begin writing. The snow still lies deep and white after last week’s storm. The gutters are blocked with ice, in spite of all our efforts to alleviate the problems of ice jams and icicles, but our wood stove keeps the house warm. We have enough, as far as creature comforts are concerned. We are happy living a life of relative simplicity.

But, as Chuck wrote about in Saturday’s blog: there are no advantages or disadvantages. I carry awareness of death, yet I also choose to fully live, to each day more fully embrace this life I am in, to continually shed old burdens and become more fully myself. It is my choice to more fully open to where this life is leading me, into the unknown to be sure, but I know, from previous experiences, that if I remain open, allowing myself to be guided, that my life will indeed be fuller, with far greater experiential potential than if I chose to remain in an old state of suppression, repression, and depression.

In suggesting that I am open to being led or guided through life, I am speaking of being alert to and aware of the meaningful signs I encounter as I go about living each day. These signs often point out a direction to take, offering me a choice of one thing or another, leading to different outcomes, different experiences. In navigating through life in this manner the journey becomes partly personal intent, partly spirit-driven, and also partly universe-driven. As I engage in this process of navigation, I have come to rely on what I consider to be two of the most important mantras for living a life of constant growth. They are:

1. Everything is possible.

2. Everything is meaningful.

Jeanne gave me these mantras quite a few years back, as I struggled through a time of great personal conflict. I saw how important they were, strong supports, always ready to offer me the light at the end of the tunnel, the hope and optimism to keep going, as I learned to accept the signs and synchronicities that were indeed present to guide me. I just had to look for them.

Once I accepted these two ideas as the backbone of living a life of fulfillment, my world lightened considerably. By continually repeating and admitting to the truths of these two phrases, the darkness that I often found myself in began to lift. Eventually, I saw and perceived life and myself differently. And my life, seemingly of its own accord, began to change, as I allowed the intent of these two mantras to become my intent.

I know that many people give up hope of ever having a better life, a different life, a fulfilling life, not finding what they need, feeling overcome by the challenges and vicissitudes of life, electing to stay in a state of incompletion. But is it really easier? As Chuck and the seers of ancient Mexico state, there are no advantages or disadvantages because we are all facing the same thing. In reality, we are all facing the light and the dark. But we can certainly choose how we are going to face them.

Being in the darkness may be the only way that we can see the light at the end of the tunnel. And the opposite is perhaps also true: that it is only when we are in the light that we notice the darkness encroaching. Is it the light or is it the darkness that we fear? Both are present simultaneously. Facing both are necessary aspects of the personal journey.

Today, I ask Jeanne for guidance around this dilemma, as we all suffer at times in darkness. We all need a little light to guide us. We all seek something, and even a pinhole of light at the end of the tunnel may be all we need to keep going.

Jeanne says: Look within where all of life lies waiting to be explored. In personal sifting, in explorations of the self, will all light and all darkness be revealed. It is not so easy to simplify this process to a few words, but I will try, for it is indeed a subject worthy of making available, so that all may journey inward, even as they journey outward.

I ask, first, that a process of sitting calmly alone, in quietude, be established on a daily basis. In order to begin to change one’s life, one must learn to slow down. Even if it seems that there is no time for such a practice, it must be arranged for and strictly adhered to. It is in such quiet times that one will draw upon the inner knowing that is necessary for taking a journey of change.

Find a time each day to sit calmly. It does not need to be any place special, but it should entail noticing the breath, using it to center and calm the self for a few minutes at a time. Your breath is always with you. You carry it with you at all times, so where and when you choose to do this practice does not matter. The only thing that matters is doing it.

You can do this calm sitting in the car after a drive to work, before stepping out into the workday. You can do it for a few moments at the beginning of the day, sitting in bed. The early morning, still drowsy from sleep, is perhaps the most beneficial time to connect with the inner self, before one steps into the outer self who must begin a day of outer doings.

By offering the self a few moments of quiet, by being open to the inner self and the mantras of possibility and meaningfulness, as Jan states, a new feeling about life in general will begin to take over. Without trying, simply by intending a rich life full of signs and synchronicities, one will begin to have experiences to support the changing self.

Begin this process now, this day. Sit quietly. Breathe calmly. Repeat the mantras: Everything is possible. Everything is meaningful.

Do this for 5 minutes. Breathe in and out slowly and deeply. Let the mantras erase the thoughts that preoccupy you.

Accept the truth that life, the universe, and the goodness that exists all around are there for you too. Do this now and begin the process of opening to the light and to the dark, for they ride side by side, within each one of you. And they are both ready to guide you.

Thank you, Jeanne. As I finish channeling, coming out of the dark tunnel that is my experience with her, I see that the light has come into the world, creeping over the snow, through the trees and into the house. I see the tracks of deer, fox, cats, squirrels and mice in the snow outside the window, life that is present in the dark, in the night, as well as in the day.

As I greet the light, I am thankful for this guidance on behalf of all of us, and I look forward to more experiences of these two dear mantras—everything is possible and everything is meaningful—for they have indeed served me well. I hope they work for you too. The third mantra that Jeanne gave me, that was so helpful and still is to this day, is: Everything will work out just fine!

Please feel free to post comments or respond to this message in the post/read comments section below. And thank you for passing the messages on!

Most fondly and humbly offered.

Chuck's Blog

Chuck’s Place: There Are No Advantages or Disadvantages

January 15, 2011 Chuck Leave a comment

From the perspective of the seers of ancient Mexico, we are all equal. Regardless of wealth, status, privilege, health, genes, family; we all face the same ultimate adversary: DEATH! Seers choose to face this truth directly; hence, they focus all their energy on preparing for this inevitable encounter.

The seers teach gazing at and breathing in the sun’s powerful rays, while protectively shielding the eyes from direct contact with the sun, to become energized. Similarly, yogis teach breathing in prana, vital energy from the sun for the same reason. Wherever we are, on a beach in Tahiti or a prison cell at Attica, the sun shines equally upon us all. We can choose to be present and soak in the sun’s energy.

In this moment, pause, look for the light. Is it refracted on a wall or perhaps emanating from a bare lightbulb? Focus on it; soften your gaze, and breath in the energy of the light. No light? Visualize the sun in your imagination and breathe in its energy. There are no advantages or disadvantages.

We might pine to live in a different home, with different people, in a quieter place. Yet, if we find our home on a sidewalk square on the streets of Calcutta, with no other option, we are afforded equal opportunity to focus our awareness on releasing our abdomen and breathing in deeply the prana in the air that surrounds us.

As I sit and write, my senses are assaulted by loud vibrating machines interspersed with thundering hammers. “More good news to break up my meditation?” states an old reggae song, or are these noises promptings to lose my self-importance—it’s not about me. Why spend my vital energy on resistance and resentment? No matter what environment you find yourself in at this moment there is likely something that feels offensive. Do we attach to feeling offended, disempowered and resentful, or do we liberate ourselves by storing our energy and learning to go with the flow?

Our Western world is measured by progress. Where am I in relation to my ideal job, educational goals, financial dreams, family plan? Of course, it makes sense to immerse ourselves in all these goals, but we do well to realize that it’s all really just playing house. In the final analysis, it’s not about how well we’ve lived or loved, it’s how prepared we are for our ultimate encounter with death.

The seers suggest that we indeed immerse ourselves fully in our chosen lives—to be impeccable in fully living them. They call this the Art of Stalking. For them, stalking is the acknowledgment that you can be fully present and alive in your life, in fact, any life, but at any moment that life will completely dissolve, and it’s on to the next adventure.

Are we prepared to open up to this adventure, or do we cling stubbornly to this world demanding to reincarnate? Stalking means living fully, impeccably, yet with no illusion of permanence. To forget that we are all mere stalkers of lives upon this earth, to attach to the notion of creating something lasting, is to take the eye off the ball of our true destiny: one of inevitable, complete, and total change.

Fulfillment, in this life, is about fully opening to experiencing all that we fear in the lives we have chosen to stalk. This might mean to face and depotentiate our deepest hidden truths; to laugh at ourselves; to drop our protective shields and open fully to deep love, to sexual ecstasy, to deep pain and sorrow; to full breath; to energetic life beyond the body; to utter calm. These are the potentials of human experience that challenge us to become fluid, to let go with abandon, to fully prepare for the final leap beyond death’s door. These experiences are available to everyone.

Remember, there are no advantages or disadvantages. We all face the identical door. We all have our individual appointment with death. We all have, within ourselves and the lives we are in, all that is needed to prepare to successfully move into new life.

Take advantage of your opportunity, available to all, to breathe and take in the energy of the light.

If you wish to correspond, please feel free to post a comment below.

Until we meet again,
Chuck

Jan's Blog

A Day in a Life: Our Blizzardy Ways

January 12, 2011 Jan Leave a comment

It’s snowing heavily in the Northeast today, the snow piling up as each hour passes, covering the remnants of last week’s storm, beautifying the world in a way that only snow can do. But what lies beneath that thick coating of winter white? Everything that is present throughout the year is still there, though it is hidden, unseen and so also unknown, in a sense. The psyche can work like a snowstorm at times, hiding from us the truth of what lies at our core, protecting us and even tricking us into thinking otherwise. When the psyche rescues us or protects us in this manner we can become so used to its covert operations that we end up relying on it when, in fact, it may be doing us a disservice, causing harm rather than keeping us safe. One day we may wake up and realize that it has been snowing for far too long and that it is finally time to dig ourselves out of our blizzardy ways, out of the muffling drifts, the cold coverings that have kept us from truly knowing our deeper issues, our truths, and our honest selves.

At times of such awakenings, as we sweep and shovel our way to the inner self that lies frozen, as the earth now lies frozen, we discover that beneath the cold outer covering we are soft and vulnerable, pliable and alive. It may take some probing, but eventually we discover that we have long buried feelings, that we are sensitive beings needing attention. It may be revealed that we are indeed seeking a means of evolving beyond the state we have existed in for so long.

Recapitulation is one means of carefully removing the layers of snow, the protection that we have used so successfully to keep us going. Recapitulation helps us to understand how we have survived the worst of the blizzard, how we have remained alive in spite of our long-term frozen state. Recapitulation, when fully embraced as a means of self-discovery is a process of scraping away the snow and ice that have kept us safe, but also kept us from fully living, from fully experiencing our true selves and all that life itself offers. During the process of recapitulation we may actually discover more about ourselves than we have ever really known or imagined we could know. We may find that we are truly a mysterious, unknown being full of surprises and wonder.

Beneath the heavy cold snow lies the frozen earth, and within the frozen earth lie the seeds of life to come. We are the same way. We too have seeds buried deeply inside us that are just waiting to be discovered. In undertaking a process of recapitulation, we offer ourselves access to not only our deeper selves but all the potential that lies within that deeper self, the potential that will not have access to life if we do not dig deep enough to uncover it. If we can allow ourselves to dig deeply enough so that we discover these seeds of opportunity, greeting them with light and nurturance, we offer ourselves access to far greater life on earth than if we continue to ignore them or pretend they don’t exist.

And what if we choose to leave them alone, to not to take an inner journey? That is our personal choice, but to be fair to the inner self it seems only right to make that decision in full awareness that we are choosing to leave those seeds untouched. Is it not far better to know of their existence and determine that we are not ready to unearth them in this lifetime, to be that truthful with ourselves, knowing that in another lifetime we will return to deal with them again? Can we do this and be okay with this choice? Will our spirit let us make this decision?

I believe that our spirit may let us go along with this decision for a while, letting us get comfortable with being in control, but then it will make attempts to jolt us. It will find ways to make us face the fact that we have these seeds of true life, natural life within us, seeds that are just waiting to germinate and grow. Just as nature waits so patiently for spring to come, so do the seeds of new life within us wait for the opportunity to sprout.

Our spirit is like nature in that way. It will return like the seasons, attempting to wake us up to our true potential, to warm us with awareness and offer us the light we need to see into our darkness. But I also believe that modern humanity has come so far from nature, so far from how truly close we are to the natural world that we have lost our connection to our own natures, our own cyclical awakenings, our own innate, instinctual natures. We have relied on other means of perceiving and valuing life, but really we are as natural as the earth.

In this winter season we may lie covered in snow too, but keep in mind that spring will come, it always does. The sun will shine, it will melt the snow and the truth of all that lies buried under it, right now, will be revealed. It is then that we will be confronted with the process of recapitulation, when we can no longer deny the facts that lie at our feet. And the real truth is that we don’t have to wait for spring to come.

We can become our own natural force of discovery. We can elect to acknowledge that we have indeed led frozen lives far from our true natures, and we can accept the stirrings of our spirit now, rather than wait for the natural disasters that are sure to come to shake us up. Recapitulation offers us the opportunity to become one with ourselves, our natural selves, flowing with and allowing nature to guide us, to show us the way to true alignment with the greater self.

As I have been writing this blog nature has been showing me how its natural course is in alignment with my intent to keep growing and expressing what I have learned. The world is changing as I write. The snow still falls, but less heavily. The sun has poked out a few times, the squirrels are running through the trees in the backyard, the birds are landing on the stark winter branches of the trees knocking snow to the ground. Life, nature, never stops; even though it may seem to be smothered and asleep, it is in fact very much alive, just as we are.

Nature is eternal and so are we, but just how energetically and deeply alive we decide to be is up to us. Our spirits reflect this eternal aliveness, letting us know that we are fully capable of awakening to our true selves, at any time. Do we dare to align with the natural self, the spirit, the body, the innate memory self who knows full well just how real and alive to be? There is more life available than meets the eye.

What is your spirit trying to tell you today? Look to nature and then look to the natural self where all the answers lie, within. In alignment with your spirit, throw your intent out to the universe and watch it present in nature, as it guides you through recapitulation to uncover your deepest truths and riches.