Autumn

On the healing path …
After getting back from England I was preoccupied with wanting to learn more about feminine energy versus masculine energy.  This idea came one day while surfing the web, I found my self on the website of the Institute for Noetic Sciences (noetic.org) and was reading some of the discussions.  There was one contributor who went into lengthy discussion about chakras and how each one represents masculine and feminine energy.  I found this a very interesting concept, I really wanted to learn more about the chakras.  I continued to do more research on the internet and from books.  The things I found didn’t really answer for me the basic ideas of feminine and masculine energies and there was so much about the feminine energy being related to the occult as well as the change occurring with the 2012 phenomena.  I just didn’t feel like this was what I was searching for related to wanting to understand more about the chakras.  I also heard about the movie “The Secret” and saw an episode of the Oprah Show promoting this movie.  The movie was about the “law of attraction” and how intention and action causes universal energy to manifest what you desire.  I also passed on following this direction of my attention.  I recalled ACIM mentioning the difference between magic and miracles. (ACIM Principles of Magic #14 Miracles bear witness to the truth.  They are convincing because they arise from conviction.  Without conviction they deteriorate into magic, which is mindless and therefore destructive; or rather; the uncreative use of the mind.)  I knew I wasn’t looking for magic.  My joy was coming from being connected once again with my soul and God so the knowledge I sought was not to manipulate universal energy to benefit my human existence.
I was lying on my yoga mat one Saturday morning in meditation, working my focus through my chakra points, when that voice in my head said “look up chakras on Youtube”.  Well I did just that and what the search brought up was a part of a lecture by Caroline Myss.  I recognized her from an episode of Super Soul Sunday from a few months back but I wasn’t familiar with her work.  I began playing this 10 minute video segment and it was exactly what I was looking for, an explanation of each chakra energy point and how it connects us to the world and to universal energy.  The Youtube video ended up being one 10 minute segment of a 2.5 hour class Caroline gave back when she was promoting her book Anatomy of the Spirit.  I watched this lecture plus several others available on Youtube.  I read Anatomy of the Spirit the next week and gained the greater understanding of how the “walls” we put up actually disturb the energy flow of the chakras thereby reducing the universal energy force coming to us and disturbing our well being.  If we continue to live with these disturbances we bring disease to the body as energy is then sacrificed by our organs to compensate for what should be provided to us by being connected to the universal energy grid.  (This really helped to understand the work being performed by Paul and other Reiki practitioners).
Caroline has become my primary teacher for the last six months.  I have listened to and watched many of her lectures available on her teaching website CMED.com.  Caroline is a mystic whose early gift was to be able to see people’s illnesses from their disturbances in their chakras and then describe how their psyches were creating the illness, this is called being a medical intuitive.  She has evolved her mystic life to teaching others to develop their own gifts for becoming more conscious (she calls this becoming a congruent personality) to be able to serve others.  I have been on the mystic path with her for several months, working through my personality issues; following her book Entering the Castle.
Trust
So many spiritual teachers I watched on TV would speak of need for forgiveness.  Iyanla Vanzant in her new TV show spoke constantly of “doing our work” to evaluate our roles and misperceptions in our relationships.  I felt like I had worked through a major issue I had earlier in the year with forgiveness and the taking of stamps from Una.  Not wanting to be tricked by my ego into thinking I was “all good” I figured I still had some work to do regarding to my first serious relationship back in my early twenties.  I spent some time thinking about what feelings I still had about this person all these years later and found that the main feeling I had was shame.  During the time we were together several people had warned me that he was picking up other girls while living with me, Paul was one of the people who told me this.  So after we separated I was able to conclude that he must have been cheating on me as people who loved me could have only been telling the truth.  This made me feel ashamed of myself for being so blind and naïve. I had chosen to trust him and he had made a fool of me, and I felt embarrassed that I had never known.  This made me consider for a few days my trusting nature.  Being trusting had caused me to carry the feeling of shame for several decades; was being a trusting person really who I wanted to be?
Later that week an incident had occurred at work.  I was finishing up a project with a consultant who had work with me on one project for 6 years.  This firm was notorious for making mistakes so it was an arduous project.  There was one task left to complete so I left it to them to take care of, trusting that this minor thing could happen without my full attention, it was the submission of a minor construction permit.  A situation with the paperwork caused a delay in submitting the permit.  And then as luck would have it (serendipity actually) I opened up the permit package to look at something unrelated and found a major mistake on the permit plans.  I was furious with them but also with me for trusting that they could handle the task unsupervised.  After fuming for a while, and venting to one of my co-workers, I returned to my office and thought “I trusted them to get this done and look what happened!”
By this point in my development I was living a pretty serene life, accepting calmly most of the things happening in my life, so getting disturbed by something made me realize that this was a significant lesson for me.  I knew this was part of my trust lesson that I had been working on, “What was the solution?”  Was I going to stop trusting others to avoid shame and embarrassment if things didn’t go as I expected or was I going to continue to be a trusting person?  I considered which was more important to me and the person I felt I was inside, to avoid shame or to live with love and trust of others?  I decided that continuing to be a trusting person was who I wanted to be.  It was my choice if I wanted to feel shame if it didn’t work out.  I would choose no shame.
Feeling good about me, just one of many rewards…
One evening I was surfing my favorite internet sites and on the Chopra Center site someone has posted a link to a study done by the Vatican on “New Age” spirituality (I think the person was looking to guilt site readers into returning to Catholicism).  I went and perused the study and what I felt was amazed.  This study described traits of New Age beliefs that were in many ways the very realizations I had come to during the past months.  As examples: the link between God, energy, and quantum physics;  all humans are part of God with Jesus as our brother and his being the example of human potential; the study of all cultural practices, myths, and faiths to recognize the similarities in all faith practices.  These were all things I had learned but who was my teacher?  Who was my guide?  I felt this document bears witness to the fact that I was guided by my soul with lots of help from spirit guides, intuition, dearly departed, any and all of these aspects of grace, it’s all just a matter of how I choose to define Divine guidance.  (I am learning that “New Age” is a term currently rejected by those teachers I do respect such as Oprah, Caroline Myss, and Marianne Williamson.  New Age ideas in the late 2000 century pulled into its umbrella magic, occult, UFOs, vegetarianism, and utopian planetary government; such extreme diversity of ideas took credibility away from the movement.  Much of the spiritual ideology is being evolved by current spiritual leaders with the focus on the personal ‘self’ connection with the Divine.)
In November I turned 50.  It was a time of abundance, gifts, and joy.  I welcomed this milestone of my life with exuberance and acceptance.  I had the opportunity to see Caroline Myss speak on the 16th and then Deepak Chopra on my actual birthday.  My birthday celebrations lasted a week with the opportunity to share the occasion with family and friends and 5 different birthday cakes!
We build upon the wisdom of those who came before…
The weeks between Thanksgiving and Christmas I watched the 6 part series The Power of Myth, a Bill Moyers interview with Joseph Campbell filmed in 1985 and 1986 and aired on PBS in 1988, a year after Campbell died.  Just as so many other sources of great lessons kept poking at me to take notice, this was the case with Joseph Campbell.  I believe I first heard mention of him by George Lucas when watching a program about the making of “Star Wars” and then again by George Lucas when he was interviewed by Oprah.  In this case Oprah brought my attention to Campbell by emphasizing him at a great teacher.  Finally, when Oprah interviewed Mastin Kipp on Super Soul Sunday and he spoke of the significant role Campbell had played in his development I knew I had to find the Power of Myth and watch it. I found the series on Vimeo and watched about one episode a week.
I want to back track to earlier in the year to be able to describe how I felt while watching these episodes.  In the spring just past, as I recounted, I began a Sunday practice of watching spiritual programming to make the day sacred and to focus on centering my self for a new week.  The episode of Super Soul Sunday with the interview with Deepak Chopra and Oprah in India had a physical effect on me.  I watched it in the evening and went to bed.  Well I was up most of the night I was so stimulated.  I am a great sleeper so in the past when I couldn’t fall asleep I would get myself upset.  I was a bit disturbed by it and remember thinking to myself that I was “over stimulated”, a term I remember using for my kids when they were infants.  The following Sunday it happened again after watching the movie I am. I just felt so light and wanted to share the new insights with my family.  This night I couldn’t sleep again. I began to think about my excitement in terms of my body being made of energy and how my growing awareness increased my energy frequency thereby affecting my cells.  I now call this feeling Grace as it is the same feeling I strive for during prayer, meditation and yoga to know I am connecting with God, the Universal Source.  It is wonderful to know that it is so easily received by the task of learning.  This feeling now guides me to know when the information I am receiving is truth and the lessons I should be learning at this time; the lack of this feeling or an uncomfortable feeling tell me to turn away from ideas before me.  So, I watched the six episodes of The Power of Myth and I was just vibrating in bliss!
I was captivated by Joseph Campbell, he just seemed to glow and transcend the 30 year old TV program.  He spent his life studying all cultures of the earth only to find that the basic myths and rituals all have their basis on the same ideas of life, death, and spirituality.  As a scientist his research was for him evidence to the fact of spiritual existence.  This Sage who came before me had completed the work that I had been touching on all year, the evidence that we are all connected to each other and guided to the same awareness by our spiritual guides.
There were three questions in my mind throughout the autumn months that were resolved by Joseph Campbell.  The first and most critical to my daily life was that I had become uncomfortable with my relationship with my husband.  I recognized we were both on admirable paths of learning but I was uncomfortable with the thought that we would not be able to relate to one another, Peter coming from a place of science and physical reality, my perspective now coming from a soul perspective of Love and timelessness.  Joseph Campbell’s most famous book is The Hero with a Thousand Faces which he spoke about in the interview, relating how all mythologies are hero journeys and follow a standard story line of events.  He related the story of Luke Skywalker in Star Wars to ancient myths like the Iliad.  Then he quickly spoke on the reluctant hero character, like Han Solo, who finds himself caught up in the adventure and innately makes the right decisions and takes the right path to resolve the situation.  Instantly I realized this was my Peter, the reluctant hero.  We are moving together, advancing in our awareness.  I, like Luke Skywalker, had to go through the training and awareness to overcome my own lack of confidence in my self, to move forward to tackle the giants.  Peter, my Han Solo, has the self confidence to trust his own inner voice to lead him forward.  I feel at peace in my relationship now and everyday I see our paths in parallel and coming together.
Another question that Campbell helped me to understand and then consider my own views on is what is meant by the term personal God.  I had seen a quote by Albert Einstein where he said he didn’t believe in a personal God. Joseph Campbell said that cultures east of Arabia generally don’t believe in a personal God.  They don’t view God as a person but instead the un-knowable power of all that is.   Years ago I took a leadership class and we visited a Hindu temple.  We toured their church and were told the story of each of the deities they had represented there.  The woman giving the tour made sure she told us that they believed in one God.  I could not understand at the time what that meant to believe in one God and then worship all these statue deities.
With what Campbell explained about eastern cultures belief in a single universal force as God, along with my past year of learning and experiencing universal energy flowing through all things and connecting us, I understood that I too believed in a non-personal God.  But, there was more I had learned during this year.  In my upbringing of there being only one God (and you weren’t to honor any other images) I only ever believed and prayed directly to God.  I put no importance on angels, saints, or even Mary.  My petitions went straight to God.  Even Jesus didn’t make it into my prayers because we were taught that he and the Holy Spirit were God so there is just one man on top.  I recognized God is a personal and non-personal God.  All things are made from drops of energy that are of God, each soul, angel, saint, sage, and prophet; these are our personal connections to God that we find in each other, in our spiritual guides, and in our selves.  And, the non-personal God is LOVE; love that gives and gives.  To bask in this love I say to myself “Love like the Sun” and I feel it.
Joseph Campbell gave me the answer to one more question of my mind, that being about female and male energy.  It was very simple in fact and part of all cultural ritual.  Female energy and traits relate to the natural and male energy and traits relate to the social. This is represented by the rites of passage from childhood to adulthood by humans.  In women nature brings on menstruation indicating adulthood.  In men, society establishes the learning of skills and responsibilities to prove movement into adulthood.  Female traits of compassion, nurture, and inclusion are related to being.  This is balanced with male traits of strength, focus, and productivity related to doing.
I would be hard to write about the year of 2012 without mentioning the date 12-21-12 and the Mayan calendar transition.  I use the word transition as I did take time to read about the Maya and their perception of all things moving in cycles with a rising and lowering like day and night and the moon cycles of the months.  I do think the Mayans may have understood more about earth and energy cycles then we do because they put their attention on understanding it.  So I viewed the noted date as a transition, as many spiritual people did, a rising of female energy that I do believe marks a time of more compassion for the earth and each other.
Books read during this period:
Embraced by the Light by Betty J. Eadie
Edgar Cayce’s Readings on Home and Marriage by William and Gladys McGarey
Anatomy of the Spirit by Caroline Myss
Super Brain by Deepak Chopra
 
Miracles are examples of right thinking, aligning your perceptions with truth as God created it.  ACIM Principals of Miracles #36.