The Secret Laws of The Shadow: Part 3

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The Adversarial Relationship

In the first two parts of this series on the shadow and the soul we discussed the power of unconscious negativity and the nature of conditional immortality. The third secret law of the shadow concerns the adversarial relationship that exists between the shadow and the soul. The chief feature of that antagonism is this: The degree of emotional toxicity in our shadow is the degree to which we are separated from our true identity and our soul.

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The Wheel of Life

Virtually everyone on this planet is disconnected in some respect from their soul and who they really are. The transcendent, overarching purpose of life is to discover our true identity and reclaim our Divine connection. We are locked to the wheel of birth, death, and rebirth until we do. For the most part we are more in tune with our shadow than we are with our soul; more in touch with suffering and self-absorption than with joy and unconditional love. While this condition need not be true, the reason it is true is that the vast majority of people who inhabit this planet have not gone to the trouble of confronting and clearing unconscious toxicity from their psyche. Clearing that toxicity is the foundation of all spiritual endeavor and all real growth. Without our doing that work the shadow finds it remarkably easy to frustrate our soul and  our goals and limit our growth.

The Axis of Consciousness

Think of life as proceeding along two axes. One axis is vertical. The other is horizontal. Where they intersect is where life begins. The vertical axis is the axis of our soul. It contains our identity and purpose. Its qualities are a deep peace, unconditional love, insight, joy, and a clear acceptance for all the varied experiences that life brings us, the good as well as the bad. The farther up we travel on the vertical scale of the soul the more light we have in our psyche.

The horizontal axis is the axis of physical existence. It is the axis of success/failure, happiness/sorrow, and birth/death. The farther we travel along this axis from where it is intersected by the vertical access the more material success we have.

Duality and Polarization
Where the vertical axis is defined by unity and oneness, the horizontal axis is defined by duality, polarity and separation. When we live in duality we want to experience the positive side of each duality and avoid the negative side. We strive mightily toward what we think will make us happy and attempt to avoid what we fear will bring us suffering. How ironic is it then that what we struggle to avoid we often end up attracting into our lives.

The culprit creating this intolerable situation is the shadow. The shadow is not only sly but has also silently infiltrated every aspect of our lives. It operates without our awareness or our conscious permission. It could care less what we think, what we want, or what we hope for. It is not our friend but our enemy. Its mission is to defeat us and deprive us of fulfillment.

The shadow functions on both axes of life. On the horizontal axis it limits and controls our success, while on the vertical axis it locks us into darkness and deprives us of contact with our soul. As long as the shadow is charged with unconscious toxicity we are lost, ignorant of who we really are, and unable to fulfill our soul potential. However, when we heal that unconscious toxicity we release our internal obstacles to success and remove the hidden barriers to discovering our identity. True identity is found in the soul.

Temporary Relief Syndrome

Years ago, when I was the Publisher of the Yoga Journal, an article was submitted to us by a man who had attended a Yoga/meditation camp in Europe. Hundreds of people attended the camp and they all meditated together for several hours every day. During those meditations this man had amazing out of the body experiences, astral traveling in spiritual dimensions of great light. Many of his fellow meditators had similar experiences of their souls. Yet when he returned to the states, and the energy of those experiences had worn off, he found himself back where he had been, with the same internal problems and issues. Despite his transcendental soul experiences nothing fundamental had transformed within him. Why? The answer is quite simple. He had gone “up” into higher consciousness rather than “down” into the darkness of his shadow. While the soul light that he had gained from his meditations in Europe circulated in his system he was unaware of his shadow. Unfortunately, when he used up that soul light his problems returned with a vengeance. His shadow hadn’t been defeated as he had hoped. It was only waiting for the right moment to reassert its power in his life.

Seen from this context, meditation often functions as a drug. While it takes us away from our problems by lifting us into a higher orbit of consciousness, it does not necessarily resolve them. While it is non-toxic and centering, its effects are often temporary until we face, confront, and clear our shadow. All true growth starts in darkness, not in light. What starts in light leaves the darkness intact; what starts by facing that darkness will emerge into a higher light.

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Cervical Cancer

Marion came to me with cervical cancer. I started her session by putting one hand on the base of her spine, the other on the base of her neck. A lovely lavender light soon flowed from my hands into her nervous system. Within minutes she was deeply relaxed. I kept one hand on the base of her spine and placed the other one on her lower abdominal area. The energy coming out of my hands shifted, becoming a bright red. She tossed her head back and forth for a moment and then started screaming in German. It was Helmut this and Helmut that. What was amazing is that while she consciously knew no German she continued screaming in German for three quarters of an hour. Finally, as her catharsis ended, the energy going into her from my hands shifted again, becoming bright gold. Within minutes she became incredibly peaceful. The session was over.

When she came back to normal consciousness she shared her experience. In the first change of the energy, when it went from lavender which relaxed her to red which brought up her unconscious toxicity, she found herself back in Nazi Germany. She was married to a German general. With the war over he came home and told her how he had hated killing many Jews. She then told him her big secret. She had used her position to save the lives of many Jews and get them out of the country. Telling him what she did was a fatal mistake. He went crazy, beat her, raped her, ripped out her eyes and left her to die. Her screaming and yelling earlier in the session was her reliving those painful events. When that toxicity cleared the energy changed again, going from red to gold. She found herself lifted out of her body into her soul and floating in a golden energy, feeling clearer, more whole and peaceful than she ever had.

When I cleared that toxic experience out of Marion’s system a major impediment was removed from her life and she was able to have a direct experience of being at one with her soul. By going down into her darkness she was able to rise and experience the true light of her soul. She went back to her doctor a few weeks later. Her cancer was completely gone.

The Secret Laws of the Shadow: Part 2

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Carl Jung once wrote “that which we don’t confront within we will meet as fate.” In other words, there is a direct correlation betweenthe repressed emotion in our psyche and what will later manifest in our experience.

The Consequences of Repressed Emotion

Our shadow is composed of all the difficult and traumatic experiences we have endured but never confronted, processed, and cleared from our system. These experiences are latent in our psyche, obscure, hidden, and dangerous to our well-being. Just because we have forgotten them does not mean they have forgotten us. In fact, it is our conscious failure to remember these repressed emotional experiences that gives them their tremendous power to wreak havoc in our life. What we ignore eventually becomes the dominant power in our life.

Subconscious Immortality

The second secret law of the shadow states that the repressed emotion we fail to consciously confront and clear becomes exalted in our subconscious  attaining a state of conditional immortality. This means that whatever repressed emotion we have warehoused in our subconscious by not consciously confronting it has been given a license to not only repeat in this life but in future lifetimes as well. This extraordinary situation occurs because what we fail to clear in any one lifetime will burrow deeper into our system and be stored as a toxic condition in our soul. The deeper these  repressed emotions and toxic conditions  penetrate into our system the more difficult they are to find and clear. When we incarnate next time with these repressed emotions  firmly entrenched in our soul and outside our conscious remembrance they will initiate the negative cycle all over again. What we refuse or fail to face will remain immortal until we consciously face and clear it. That is the only condition that will defeat it, destroy its exalted status as a subconscious troublemaker, and completely remove its immortal status. Repressed emotion rules our life until we confront and clear it.

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Psychic Balance

When we clear these toxic conditions and their repressed emotional content  from our system we come back to internal balance. This creates, in turn, an opportunity to consciously reunite with our Soul and remember who we really are. Consciously confronting our subconscious toxicity is then the key to transforming our experience and elevating our life.

A Transformative Event

Hector came to a healing workshop I gave at the University of Illinois. He was a slightly built man of medium height with a gentle and kind demeanor who was very eager to exploit his healing opportunity. When he first got on the healing table and the energies began to flow into him he quickly got peaceful. A moment later everything changed. His body got rigid and taut, and he started kicking and screaming, furiously trying to clear an intense and intolerable internal event. This went on for nearly forty-five minutes. When it was over his clothing was soaking wet and his body exhausted. Yet there was also a deep sense of peace within him that had not been there before. When his session was over Hector told me an amazing story.

When the energy began flowing into him he had immediately felt a deep sense of peace. He was completely relaxed when the unexpected began to unfold in his mind’s inner eye. He saw himself as a priest accused of heresy during the Inquisition. He denied the charges against him and was subjected to intense torture. First he was beaten severely. When he refused to recant he was put on the rack. When the rack failed to break him he was castrated and left to die in a pool of his own blood. He died swearing eternal revenge on those who had done this terrible thing to him.

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Free as a Bird

Emotional Repression and Disease

His story was prelude to an unfortunate circumstance in this life. Three years earlier he had been diagnosed with testicular cancer and one of his testicles had been surgically removed. The repressed emotional trauma  that he had no conscious awareness of had manifested as cancer. Nowit was over. He had found his repressed emotional demon, faced it, re-experienced it and in doing so cleared it. The toxic experience that had plagued him for hundreds of years was robbed of its exalted status, deprived of its immortality, and completely defeated. Hector was free.

The Secret Laws of The Shadow: Part 1

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Everyone has a shadow. The shadow is composed of repressed negative emotional reactions to traumatic events. These repressed emotions include , terror, resentment, rage, hatred, grief, depression, and toxic shame. These painful feelings don’t dissolve once the events that caused them have passed. Instead they are gradually ignored and buried in the body.

When these emotions are buried in the body they fall under the control of the subconscious mind. Two things happen when negative emotions are warehoused in the body and neither is good. First, we lose our conscious connection to these feelings and the events that produced them. While we may dismiss these traumatic emotions they do not dismiss us. Instead they function as powerful magnetic blocks in our psyche that will continue to attract similar wounding experiences into our lives, over and over again. They are free to wreak havoc in our lives because they are no longer available to the conscious mind.

The Power of the Negative

The first secret law of the shadow is this: The negative energies in our psyche rule our life until we find them, confront them, and clear them. One of the central tasks of our life is to clear our shadow. If we don’t clear our shadow we won’t regain our wholeness. Overcoming the shadow is the fulcrum on which all spiritual progress turns. When we avoid facing our shadow we prevent our growth and guarantee the continuation of our unhappiness.

Here’s a true story that perfectly illustrates this law. Miriam grew up in Europe. She was born after her father went off to war and did not actually meet him until she was three years old. When her father came home from the war she quickly became his favorite. He took her everywhere with him. Unfortunately for Miriam being her father’s favorite upset her mother tremendously.

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Emotional Abandonment

When Miriam’s mother was a child she was emotionally abandoned by her parents. Her own childhood emotional needs had never been fulfilled. As an adult she wanted her husband’s attention to be solely on her, not on her daughter. She fumed that she was second fiddle to her daughter in her husband’s affections. So she came up with a cruel solution to get her needs met. When Miriam turned five her mother sent her away to live in a Catholic orphanage. Suddenly Miriam had no family. She was abandoned and alone in a nightmare from which she could not escape. What her grandparents had done to her mother, her mother had done to her, only worse.

Decades later, when she was in her mid fifties, Miriam came to me with persistent pain in her mid back that neither her doctor nor chiropractor had been able to heal. She told me that she sensed that there were hidden emotional issues there that needed to be addressed, but she hadn’t been able to connect to them in any conscious fashion. At this point I knew nothing about her childhood. But when I put my hand on her back a moment later I knew immediately that her pain had to do with her mother.

My goal in that first session was twofold. I wanted to connect her conscious mind to the repressed emotional energy in her back then mobilize her blocked energy so it would be ready to emerge into her consciousness in future sessions. During that first session I placed my left hand on her back and my right hand on the base of her spine. I then had her make nonverbal sounds as if they were coming out of the blocked energy that was stuck in her mid back. She found making these sounds tiring and felt self-conscious in doing so.

Deep Healing

I told her that both reactions were completely normal, but the work she was doing was necessary to prepare her psyche for deep healing. We were setting the groundwork now for what would occur in future sessions. In her second session that groundwork bore fruit. This time, as soon as I touched her mid back she broke wide open and her repressed grief, shame, and rage poured out of her. As our sessions continued the heartbreak in her system cleared and she realized how her initial heartbreak had affected the entire course of her adult life. She saw that her best friend in the orphanage, who had also become her best friend as an adult, was cold, critical, and distant, just like her mother. Eventually this woman also betrayed her, causing her considerable heartache. She realized that both of her husbands had been cold, distant, and critical as well. They too had used and betrayed her, continuing the ongoing, unconscious cycle of bringing wounding experiences into her life.

Virtually all the people with whom she had established close emotional ties, in fact, were emotional replications of her mother. Wherever she went she had drawn the same shaming characteristics into her life, symbolically re-engaging her mother. She might be a mature woman in her mid-fifties but she had never outgrown her childhood trauma; never put it to rest. While she had turned her back on her mother’s cruel betrayal, that betrayal had not turned it’s back on her. It had craftily followed her wherever she went, appearing in a different guise and a different person each time, but creating the same kind of wounding event over and over again.

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Wholeness and Integration

Now as she faced and confronted her toxic shame she remembered the source of her life long wounding and cleared this piece of her shadow from her system. As she cleared it the pain in her back completely disappeared and a bright light shone in her eyes. Her face glowed. She had become whole and integrated. The light in her soul, instead of the pain in her shadow, now appeared in her eyes.

Lao Tsu, the ancient sage and founder of Taoism, once said, “Because the sage confronts his difficulties he never experiences them.” When Miriam finally turned back to confront the unconscious pain in her back her difficulties disappeared. It is often the case that we go forward by not pushing ahead but by going back to clear the past.

The Power of Identity

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You are not who you think you are. We base our concepts of identity on our relationship to our ego; our childhood imprinting; our education; our social and economic status; our self-esteem or its lack; and the roles we play in life. The truth is that none of these things has anything to do with who we really are. Not even remotely. Most of our notions about identity center on what we feel or think; what we have or do for a living. But we are not our thoughts or feelings or actions or profession.

Soul Identity

True identity exists in a far deeper stratum of consciousness than do all these things. The stratum of consciousness that contains our true identity is the Soul. Developing a conscious relationship to our soul is the only way that we can discover who we really are. That relationship is the primary purpose of life. Four conditions must be met before that relationship manifests in our lives. We must:

1. Clear our emotional toxicity.
2. Create emotional balance.
3. Possess a clear and untroubled mind.
4. Be at peace.

Unfortunately, too few of us understand just how important becoming more soul conscious is to the future of the world. Consciousness and the future are truly intertwined. If we are to have a positive, peaceful future the world must become considerably more conscious than it currently is. Without more soul consciousness on the planet, the problems we presently face will soon overwhelm us and put all our lives at risk. Einstein once said that it will take a radical new way of thinking for humanity to solve its problems. That was more than fifty years ago, before the onset of so much toxicity in our air, food, and water; before the permanent destruction of many of our natural resources and the desecration of much of our environment; and before the increase in world population to the 6.5 billion now here and soon to grow to 9 billion in the next decade and a half. Our collective failure to become more conscious has enormous future implications and puts us all at risk.

World Peace

If more of us were to change direction and become soul conscious our lives would be flooded with joy and the world would be awash in spiritual light. Suffering would vanish, inequality would disappear, and world peace would be established. We would have the power and creativity to solve the critical, time sensitive problems that now confront us. Love, and not the love of power, would become the keynote of humanity. The strength of evil would diminish tremendously.

Instead of focusing time and energy on spiritual development the world, and the West in particular, remains strongly addicted to an encroaching materialism that has spiraled out of control. While we persist in desecrating the environment the hourglass governing the fate of the world continues to empty. The time that remains to change the direction in which we are headed continues to slip away. Every hour counts. Every day we fail to act brings the threat of disaster closer to reality.

The Power of Evil

While the world sleeps evil flourishes. Humanity is ruled by fear, suffering, scarcity, and lack. The vast majority follows the path of least resistance in which the shadow side of the psyche with all its negative energies rule. The result of following the path of least resistance is that the power of the negative is the dominant power in the world.

The toxic energies in our shadow prevent us from being in alignment with our soul. The more reactive energy that builds in our shadow the greater becomes our potential for destructive action. When we finally react and inflict harm on other people, (no matter what our justification may be), we create more suffering in our own lives. What happens to the individual also occurs in the collective psyche. Too much reactive energy in the collective shadow gives rise to outbursts of hostility and conflict.

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Soul Consciousness

There is only real one choice. We either become more aware of who we are and bring more light into the collective consciousness or nature will rise up in form of earthquakes, volcanoes, and climactic changes and severely reduce the world’s population.

You find out who you really are when no darkness remains in your psyche, not before. When that experience arrives you will discover that you are neither higher nor lower or better or worse than anyone else. At the level of soul essence we are all the same. When you reach soul consciousness you are connected to the Light. That Light connection makes you whole again. The Light will guide, protect, and fulfill you. Those who survive the times ahead will have a strong soul connection.

Boundaries and Abusive Behavior

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Psychological boundaries serve two primary functions. They protect us from harm and help define who we are. A boundary may be a conscious principle such as “abuse me and you lose me” or a deep emotional knowing that we are not consciously aware of until it is activated by a real time event. In either case the violation of our well-being incites us to act in our self-interest. Enforcing our boundaries has a two fold effect. It makes us stronger and it makes our boundary system stronger as well. Strength leads to self-confidence and greater clarity about who we really are. Strong boundaries enhance our sense of self.

Never Tolerate Abuse

There is never a valid reason for tolerating abuse. If you allow yourself to be abused you are strengthening the bad tendencies of the abuser while weakening your own sense of self. When you allow the abuser to take your power you inflate his sense of control over you. This creates a very real psychic dynamic in which the abusive person has all the power and you have none. When someone steals your power you will be full of fear, rage, and resentment. These emotions are a dangerous trap. As you long as you harbor them the abusive person has the upper hand and you are stuck in harm’s way. Then, if you should choose to stand and fight it is too late. When you have internalized what your abuser wants you to feel engaging him is like giving him a gift: the opportunity to abuse and wound you further and steal what energy you have left. This uplifts the abusive person and destroys you.

Strategies for Dealing With Abuse

The best strategy to deal with an abusive person is not to internalize the abuse, take it personally, and let the abuser steal your energy but to walk away at the first sign of abusive behavior. Restraint and self discipline keep the abusive energy your attacker wants to dump on you inside him. It is better that it eats him up than it weakens you. After all, it’s his energy not yours. Don’t allow his problem to become your nightmare. You are not responsible for the way he feels or the circumstances of his life even though he may try to make you responsible for the weight of his situation. Don’t let the abusive person use guilt to
manipulate you.

However, if you have been involved in a painful transaction with an abusive person and experienced the fear, rage, and resentment that accompany a negative encounter it is important to clear those emotions from your system. Internalized emotion does not go away on its own. The sting may lessen; the memory may fade; but that energy has been stored in your subconscious as part of a permanent culture of weakness. Future events will trigger those emotions and they will create havoc in your psyche and weaken you further.

Changing Yourself

An important part of building a strong boundary system is clearing the toxic emotions from the past that will weaken you when activated. You can’t change an abusive person but you can change yourself. When you rid yourself of stored toxic emotion from the past you will be far less vulnerable to taking the abusive person’s attacks personally and internalizing their shaming emotions.

Do not forget that internalizing shame gives the abuser the upper hand. If there is no hidden shame inside you the abuser’s attacks will bounce off you and be deflected back at him. Then, instead of successfully passing his shame on to you his toxicity will weaken him.

Never feel that you are big enough to take on the abuse; or that you deserve it; or that you are being helpful and spiritual by doing so. The truth is you are neither being helpful nor spiritual. You are being foolish and untrue to yourself. The whole point of having boundaries is to be true to yourself.

To Be Eternally Present

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Body and Soul

There is an ancient Taoist aphorism that concerns the relationship of death and infinity. “To die but not to perish,” said Lao Tsu, “is to be eternally present.” How can that be, we ask ourselves, because to die is to perish. What seems irrational at first glance however, becomes plausible when we consider that we are a soul as well as a body. The soul is the inner person, the body the outer person. The body dies, the soul does not. The inner person is eternal. The body is the vehicle that anchors the soul in the material world and allows it to have the experiences necessary for its growth.

Shifts in Consciousness

The statement “To die but not to perish…” refers to the important shifts in consciousness that occur emotionally and mentally, in feeling and thought, that allow the outer person to become more  to the inner person. When the outer person becomes one with the inner person that individual is eternally present, or enlightened.

The Individuation Process

The individuation process that leads to Divine union proceeds through a series of emotional and psychic deaths in which we are called on to let go of outmoded ideas and beliefs that are no longer relevant to our growth; attachments to people and relationships that are toxic to us and inhibit our development; and notions about our own identity that are too limiting for our current level of consciousness.

Psychic Death

Psychic death refers to the idea of cracking open the many energetic shells blocking the formation of a conscious connection between the inner and outer person. These shells define the outer boundaries of our current sense of identity. They are created by chronic negative emotions and limiting or inappropriate beliefs about ourself. When they finally crack open we are temporarily overwhelmed by a flood of darkness that overwhelms our mind. When we experience that flood of darkness it feels like we are drowning. The experience of that darkness, however, is simply the release of old unconscious toxicity we have not been aware of. It represents a psychic death that clears dead or toxic energy from our system and opens our external self to more light from our soul.

Cracking Shells

Each shell that breaks, every psychic death we experience brings the outer and inner aspects of ourselves closer together. Once we have gone through enough psychic deaths and cracked open enough shells the light of our soul finally begins to operate freely in our life. Every issue that needs completion begins to move toward resolution on its own. Unexpected opportunities knock on our door. Unconditional love flows through us and touches the lives of people we have never met and may not know exist. That love continues to integrate us and increase our power. When the two aspects of our selves at last become one, we are eternally present.

Dying to Our Limitations

Spirituality then, is not about being weak, passive or resigned to one’s fate. It is about letting go and dying to our limitations so we may increase our power and awareness. It is about reaching for our destiny. It is about being fulfilled and happy. It is why we are here. It is the purpose of life.

Putting First Things First

The tragedy of life is that so many people put it last, if they think of it at all. If we were all to put true spirituality first we would find inner peace and have a peaceful world. The result of not pursuing our spiritual development collectively is that we live in increasingly dangerous times. As the future and its unknown dangers move rapidly toward us it is imperative that we develop our inner center in two significant ways. First, by becoming emotionally stable. Second, by developing a soul connection so we will be guided by our intuition to safety and success.

Energetic Healing

Energetic healing is one of the most powerful ways to achieve these two goals. It clears emotional toxicity from your system; it cracks energetic shells and opens you to your soul; it can resolve frustrating physical conditions; it clears past karma; it makes your highs higher and your lows higher; it accelerates your growth; it removes impediments to success; and it enables you to be a channel of love. If you are interested in elevating your life you might find the testimonials on the Consultations page on this site very helpful.

 

Spiritual Light

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Why the World is So Unhappy

Spiritual Light saves, heals, does not discriminate or take sides, is equally available to everyone, and is free. If this is true why isn’t the world more peaceful,and why are so many people so unhappy? One part of the answer lies in the high degree of polarization that infects each national issue and every global concern. Both the national stage and the international arena are overwhelmed by the constant clash of religious, economic, social, political, environmental, and nationalistic forces. These conflicts wax and wane in their intensity but never completely disappear. They are now trending toward their zenith in all areas simultaneously.

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Changing the World

Given the difficult conditions in the world what we can do as individuals to change the direction of events has never been more important. We can’t sit by and wait for the world to change or hope someone else will do it for us. The world will only change when enough of us have changed, not before. Spiritual growth is no longer a matter of personal preference but a world wide imperative that will impact the future of the planet. The other reason for the lack of world peace and personal unhappiness is that we are all challenged by a form of polarization that is at once eternal and personal.

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Transforming the Shadow

We each have light and dark elements in our soul. Our job is to transform the shadow side of our nature so we can let more spiritual light into our systems and stand in our real power. That is why we are here. It is no easy task. We won’t succeed in this mission unless we uproot the unconscious toxicity buried in our bodies. Much of this material comes from past life trauma that was never resolved. While we are no longer aware of these events they are the hidden cause of much of our present problems. They separate us from our soul and prevent us from expanding in the Light. Until we clear our darkness we can not stand in our power, be channels of unconditional love or vehicles through which spiritual light enters the world.

Where Peace Begins

With the world in chaos it is  a perfect time to remember that peace in this world begins with us. We are all accountable. The Light cannot be present on earth until it is present in
each of us. We are so much more powerful than we have been led by the PTB and the media to believe we are. Believe in yourself, not in what others say to control you and steal your power.

The Vertical Ascent

Growing Our Soul

Spiritual growth is like scaling a mountain. It takes time; it’s hard work; it’s challenging; it requires discipline, self-control, perseverance, and will. When we begin our ascent up a challenging mountain we don’t know if we’ll actually reach the summit but we can expect that the difficulties inherent in the journey will evoke many tides of shifting emotion. How
we deal with those emotions determines the success or failure of our climb. Of course, there are also considerable differences between spiritual growth and mountain climbing. For starters, we can’t see the mountain we must climb in order to grow our soul. That mountain is not in front of us but within us. This means we can’t chart the path to the summit, judge the difficulties and dangers along the way, let alone prepare for them, or calculate how long it will take us to reach the pinnacle. The path to the summit of consciousness is essentially unknowable. All we can do is take each step as life presents it to us, clear our toxicity so we are not detoured or defeated by self destructive emotions, work to build an inner center and establish soul contact, and have patience and faith that in due time the way forward will become clear to us. (If we are patient our lives will always flow in right timing and opportunity will knock on our door at the appropriate
moment.)

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Transformation and Growth

The first requisite to making the vertical ascent is to clear the toxic emotional blocks from our subconscious. If we don’t clear our toxicity everything else we do to enhance our spirituality will be in vain. We may feel good temporarily, like one does after a good yoga class or a peaceful meditation, but a real and lasting transformation will prove elusive. Fortunately, when we clear our toxicity we come into balance emotionally. Emotional balance has certain
signposts. These include an empty feeling in one’s solar plexus; a deep sense of peace; a feeling of buoyancy; a clear mind; a sense of humor that either increases or emerges; and a newfound delight in life. Peace and balance are not only highly desirable in and of themselves but they are of paramount importance in the vertical ascent. They are the platform for all future growth and the prerequisite for establishing soul contact.

Mastery

As we make the vertical ascent our soul must become the conscious master of our life, not our fear and not our ego. Fear and ego die hard. They persist until we overcome the emotional toxicity or karmic blocks hidden in our system. If we insist on holding onto our unconscious toxicity we will have a toxic life; one that is full of resistance, effort, suffering, lack, and unhappiness. We will hold onto grudges that we find impossible to let go of. We will be the eternal victim and display a highly reactive personality. We will take everything personally, finding slights where none occurred, creating conflict where none existed. That’s a depressing way to go through life yet countless millions do just that. Living an unconscious life is a painful experience. To live without peace is to invite conflict to be our constant companion.

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Emotional Reactivity

The world we live in is highly reactive. Emotional reactivity creates instability, uncertainty, and increasing danger. It leads to polarization, rage, conflict, and destruction. We all lose when the world becomes as reactive as it is now. The only real answer to the dilemma we face in the world is to turn within and make the vertical ascent. When the soul becomes dominant in life it is easy to let go of anger; the right decisions become clear and obvious; events occur in right timing; and abundance will find us rather than our having to struggle to succeed. When we clear our toxicity and the Soul becomes the true master of our life inner resistance ends and everything we need comes to us in the right time. In closing, let me share a few lines of wisdom from a small pamphlet called “Verses on the Faith Mind” by Sengstan, the 3rd Zen Patriarch.

The Great Way is not difficult for those who have no preferences.
When love and hate are both absent everything becomes clear and undisguised.
If you wish to see the truth
Then hold no opinion for or against anything.
To set up what you like against what you dislike is the disease of the mind.
Do not search for the truth;
Only cease to cherish opinions.
When the mind exists undisturbed in the Way,
Nothing in the world can offend,
And when a thing can no longer offend,
It ceases to exist in the old way.

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