Falling in Love……….?

I believe numinous and spiritual experience are ever present around us, it simply takes for our perception to be open to it. There are many documented ways to help to open us up to it including meditation and various drugs .However most of us go though life largely unaware of the truly exquisite magical nature of our world around us. As empaths I feel we are more open to a kind of energetic intimacy which is vastly more profound and sensual. It can literally consume one if we were to allow it.

Though, on occasions these experiences will impose themselves on us unbidden. It may be in form of a spectacular view ,a feeling of oneness with nature or some other occurrence that we intrinsically recognise as something ‘other’ than our more frequent day to day perception.

On rare occasions it appears it can be interpersonal :

“I hardly know you but when I think of you or if I am graced enough to be in your presence something extraordinary happens to me.
My spirit is given flight, all my senses are heightened seemingly to ensure that in no way  I miss any aspect of your divine self. I bathe in your gaze and become lost deep in your eyes. Any self control I have, has withered away as I respond to your every word and gesture. Anyone watching would see I was lost to you, like prey willingly hypnotised by an enigmatic predator. As a sailor must have been drawn to his personal death by the seductive call of the mermaid, I too wish to answer my heart and souls call to be as one with you. Even if it meant that I was never to find myself again it would be  small loss to be a part of you, always.”

Finding Our Way…………?

Brian: Look, you’ve got it all wrong! You don’t need to follow me. You don’tneed to follow anybody! You’ve got to think for yourselves! You’re allindividuals!Crowd: [in unison] Yes! We’re all individuals!Brian: You’re all different!Crowd: [in unison] Yes, we are all different!Man in crowd: I’m not…Crowd: Shhh!

From  Monty Pythons  Life of Brian

I absolutely love this film, there is so much humour yet underlying truth in many of the scenes.
I have always been a strongly spiritual person, not by the influence of others but simply because it seems to be my natural state. All my spiritual understandings and insights come from my research into myself and the world around me. I have found strong correlations with some aspects of more conventional spirituality, that is Buddhism, Taoism, aspects of Paganism, Pantheism, Jungian psychology, Christianity, animosity and others too numerous to mention.
The point of this post being is that I truly believe we all have the innate ability to find our truth in our own individual way. Generally those who follow a spiritual path find out it is just that, a path. As one moves through life we come to learn many things and develop beliefs that if we are fortunate are challenged, this can then make us re-evaluate our perspective.
We need to be careful however of not getting ourselves hijacked along the way by groups and people who will push their beliefs onto us in order to justify and strengthen their beliefs. I see many social media groups who pertain to being spiritually supportive and use phrases like indigos, starseeds, lightworkers etc. Although I understand that many of the groups do mean well and many can and do help people spiritually no one should deny their own experience at the expense of being part of a group.
I feel it is important for us as humans to become who we individually are.  As Carl Jung had historically purported that we need to follow our own path towards individuation. This is how we can fulfill our potential and become what perhaps nature intended to be.
I have children and I choose not to share my beliefs with them as I do not want to taint their own experience. They are brought up with love, compassion and understanding. In many children it is so wonderful to see a true sense of love and spiritual identity with all that is around them.
On walking to school this morning, my seven year old son pointed at the sunlight shining through the foliage and the May blossom and said, ‘Dad, that is so beautiful it reminds me of love.

An Eternity of Enslavement

An Eternity of Enslavement……?

Frequently I ask myself why does the human race with all our supposed intelligence continue to promote and contribute to a society based on materialism and the egoic attainment of the individual?
I mean it’s not like we haven’t been around for millennia, it’s not like that as a race we haven’t made so, so many mistakes we should have learnt from. Also there have been many great minds and spiritual leaders who have spoke wisely regarding the human condition and how we create our own suffering.
Even modern science tells us that we are nothing but a miniscule bundle of energy in a vast, infinite sea of energy. Yet we still largely continue to fight amongst ourselves, seemingly forever choosing to believe that we are all separate, that ourselves and our immediate family comes first in all matters. We value our opinions and beliefs so strongly they are fought over, wars waged, racism and all other ‘isms’ remain to cause ongoing conflict between ourselves.
To add to the irony, supposedly religious groups divide and condemn others in order to validate themselves. Scientific research which objectively may point to the possibility of non self, the possibility of a better world where the ‘ego’ could be laid aside is frequently misrepresentated and twisted to conform to individual groups ideology and thus promote ‘their’ beliefs.
The big question is ‘why does this continue?’
Is it because most people do not or refuse to see a life outside of their own ego?
Is it because we are genetically engineered in this way?
Is the temptation of short term gain on an individual basis so more meaningful and worthwhile than a peaceful and less dangerous future?
Millions of people align themselves to religious and spiritual ideals but these ideals are often again twisted and redefined in a way that suits those individuals in them that seek power and influence.
I know also there are many of us who want an end to this hypocrisy, an end to the dividing up and condemning of groups and individuals. Those of us who want to learn, do things differently for the benefit of others, animals and our planet.
And we know we are right and most of us will continue to carry this belief within us until our dying day and will be unwavering in our conviction and our actions in this world.
Strangely there does not seem to be a ‘name’ which I can find to represent these ideas adequately. But then we all know that ‘identifying’ with groups / cultures and ideologies is often where things can go horribly wrong.

A Small Sacrifice…………

Through meditation, reflection and examination I often get a glimpse of a reality which is seemingly not based on my own personal egoic view of the world. A vision of a congruent and vital Oneness of all life, all nature and the universe being inextricably bound together in a seamless, unified wave of energy. There is no room or reason for subjectivity as it only serves to confuse and trivialise the true nature of all that is.
When we are able to step out of our psyche’s preoccupation with attempting to fulfill our myriad of human ‘needs’, we can often see that we are merely a minute part of the whole. A small energetic event amidst an infinite array of energetic events that constitute our world and the cosmos.
We need to choose to intuitively follow our calling to individuate on a personal level in order that we can fulfill nature’s demand that we fully contribute to the largely unseen process of becoming.
We may have to sacrifice and destroy our ego and our idea of our own individual value for the greater good, for the furtherance of the true nature of reality in order for it to maximise its inherent potential.
Or we could cling to our small, ego led selves, the fulfillment of whose needs pay mere lip service to the call for a unified, energetic response to the cosmos’s demand for personal immersion into the whole process of reality’s will to power of becoming.

Different……….

I think our whole society tries to stabilize itself by starting out to destroy sensitivity to incoherence starting with very young children. If people could see the vast incoherence that is going on in society they would be disturbed and they would feel the need to do something. If you’re not sensitive to it you don’t feel disturned and you don’t feel you need to do anything.
I remember an instance, a daughter was telling her mother, “this school is terrible, the teacher is terrible, very inconsistent, doing all sorts of crazy things,” and so on. Finally the mother was saying, “You’d better stop this–in this house the teacher is always right.” Now she understood that the teacher was wrong obviously, but the message was, it was no use. Even the message may have been right in some sense, but still it illustrates that the predicament is that in order to avoid this sort of trouble, starting with very young children, we are trained to become insensitive to incoherence. If there is incoherence in our own behavior, we thereby also become insensitive to it.

—David Bohm, seminar on Thought and Dialogue in Ojai, November 4, 1989

For as long as I remember I have always felt different to most people, not special or gifted, just different. My perspective of the world even as a child has seemingly been unlike others. I remember being in a history lesson at school being very concerned about the then Cold War between Russia and the West and being admonished by the teacher for not concentrating. I was outraged, how could an adult ( who I had been told was to be respected and obeyed due to their standing ) not be concerned or apparently give a thought to the plight of the world.
There have been many instances ( and still are ) where I have seen the world from a completely different standpoint to the majority. I seem to have some degree of empathic ability ( I can often feel others emotions, thoughts, intentions,history,motivations etc ) although this is deemed as science fiction by society as a whole. Nevertheless here I am receiving subtle information about others somewhat unbidden.
I believe that for many people who perceive the world differently there is a tendency to grow up invalidated to some extent, this can lead to low self esteem and anxiety as we sometimes feel we must be faulty in some way. Some will give up their unique perspective and replace it with a more socially acceptable one in order to not feel isolated or alone. Some, like myself do not seem to be able to do this. Despite years of feeling largely alone in the world in terms of shared ideology I am now extremely happy that I stuck with it.

The truth is many of us are different in many ways, this however should be acknowledged and nurtured not denied by a societal construct that does not allow for individual interpretations of events but would rather hide them away or deny their very existence . The reason being the threat to the status quo, the fear of descent into chaos if people are trusted to make free decisions without censure.

Life as perceived by most people is not coherent but rather than hide or bury this perception we should perhaps push ourselves so as we can arrive at a mote mutual reality.

“As a child I felt myself to be alone, and I am still, because I know things and must hint at things which others apparently know nothing of, and for the most part do not want to know.” 
― C.G. Jung, Memories, Dreams, Reflections

“Loneliness does not come from having no people about one, but from being unable to communicate the things that seem important to oneself, or from holding certain views which others find inadmissible.” 
― C.G. Jung

 

 

 

 

An Open Book?

An Open Book?

Before I realised I had empathic tendencies I often used to get confused and disorientated by the sheer swathes of emotions and feelings that used impose themselves on me from all quarters. Especially as I work with people suffering from mental health problems some of the mindsets I have found myself sharing has on occasions been harrowing.
Now that I am more grounded and insightful my empathy can really prove useful when working with individuals.
I mostly try not to pay to much attention to my intuitions on a day to day basis as it interferes quite badly with ‘normal ‘communication for me.
However I have at times used it to help me understand others and their motives.
I have met many people both in and out of work who I can sense their psychological position , their subjective interpretation of reality. No two people are the same.
For instance, a relative of mine has sociopathic tendencies. He felt very cold and empty emotionally, a feeling of not being to display or understand love as he had seemingly never encountered it. His only goal was to control his world in order to reduce any threat to his unstable ego.
An anxious / depressed individual who feels they are lost at sea, who believes they are at the mercy of an unpredictable world which may overwhelm them at any moment. Wanting only a sanctuary of psychological peace where they no longer feel vulnerable.
The fear of someone with paranoia, of not being able to effectively perceive threats, of what is real or imagined. Of not feeling able to share those feelings as it may only go to further alienate others from someone who already feels alienated from the world.
Every person tells a story – mostly people seem to be a sum of their experiences but in that, they are in still in a ‘process’. A process of becoming, depending on subsequent experiences will ultimately decide an individuals fate in relation to their growth and ability to ‘move on’.

Again….

Do you not sense it?
Nature is calling you. Calling you away from your HD screens, away from your domestic enslavement of comfort and man made media.
It calls you to feel the chill breeze against your skin and through your hair.
To smell the damp earth beneath your bare feet, to listen to the wind in the trees and to again see the stars in the black of night.
Come with me, come with me and run through the grass, smell the night air, laugh and play and be as nature intended
No need for doubt, no need for concern, to be again what we once were.
Free, uninhibited and at one with the universe

Born into a Dream

We know you know…….

That feeling of being in isolation ( in terms of how we view life through the ego and the subsequent mass delusion of society itself ) is an unnatural state.
Although we do not ‘remember’ as such, at some level most of us are aware that living life as a human who’s actions in life are the result of a belief of being separate is a falsehood.
Perhaps before we are ‘born’ and when we ‘die’ part of us again becomes seamlessly one with the universe, our essence again dissolved into all that is, into being complete, into peace.

As humans we seek a barely identifiable unity, a feeling of wholeness, of being complete. Some seek it through relationships, some through goal achievement, some through spiritual means and some still through intoxication of the senses leading to a dissolvement of the perceived boundaries of self.

This has gone on through all of man’s existence and can be seen by his past and current belief systems i.e. building of stone circles ( signifying perhaps a ‘unity’ ), animism and actions to enable insight through meditation and prayer for instance.

Frustratingly many of us are aware that society largely is constructed in a way that works against this understanding.
How different life and relationships would be if from childhood we were all brought up with a sense of oneness with the world and each other.

Words to the Wise?

From a lifetime of reading the one person historically  I most resonate with in terms of similar beliefs / understandings is Carl Jung. There are far too many to list so I will just concentrate on one for now.

Throughout my life I have had many spiritual type experiences, usually at times I have felt more grounded e.g. following meditation. From what could be termed supernatural events to an Advaita like experience.

Some of these occurrences have been so powerful I have become concerned that I would become lost to myself and that I would be somehow caught between the worlds. Fortunately this has not happened and I have had the fortune to glimpse other perspectives  and return to my human self. Carl Jung describes it very eloquently:

It is under all conditions a most advisable thing to keep to the conscious and rational side, i.e., to maintain that side.

One never should lose sight of it. It is the safeguard without which you would lose yourself on unknown seas.

You would invite illness, indeed, if you should give up your conscious and rational orientation.

On the other hand, it is equally true that life is not only rational.

To a certain extent you have to keep your senses open to the non-rational aspects of
existence. . . .

The unconscious itself is neither tricky nor evil – it is Nature, both beautiful and terrible. . . .

The best way of dealing with the unconscious is the creative way. . . ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Pages 108-109.

Jung has said that the unconscious long identified as the oceanic in man, is Nature.

The seeker of himself often feels cast adrift, setting a course between light and dark but ultimately moved along by unseen currents deep within. ~Claire Dunne, Wounded Healer of the Soul, Page 87.

Our Innate Spirituality?

Many religions / spiritual paths suggest that spirituality is somewhere outside of ourselves, that is to say an external God or power. However many other trains of thought suggest nonduality and ‘oneness’ lead to a more definitive expression of a true spiritual experience.
I have begun to wonder what all those millennia ago was our true nature as humans and what did we possibly lose for us to feel inclined potentially fill the spiritual void?
One answer could be the loss of our natural state, the loss of our animist feeling of belonging to and being an implicit part of our world. That we were perfect and whole with that experience with no need to strive for something ‘other’ to make us feel complete.
Melissa La Flamme puts it beautifully :

AUTHENTICITY: INHABITING WILDLY TENDER REVOLUTION by Melissa La Flamme When you live from your intuitive core, your belly, your heart, let your soul lead and spirit guide you, your words and actions will be naturally subversive. You will go to your edge. You will soften. Become wildly tender. Question is, will you wholly inhabit your own revolution? In beauty? This inner revolution is a perpetual ceremony of the heart. It’s what you are for. When you are real, cooked down to essence, rather than half-baked to get approval, to look good, the projections from others may fly, seek you out and try to stick to you. Don’t let them. Instead, let your authenticity support you in carrying on whole-hearted, vulnerable conversation to resolve whatever arises. It is hard work. Uncomfortable. Deeply human. Can be harrowing. And often downright delicious. Intimate. Naked. Courageous work marked by your solid presence. Here. Now. I’d rather be whole than good, C. G. Jung said. And by whole, he meant real, messy, ensouled, deeply human, heart-broken open with compassion flowing first to ourselves, to resource and prepare to let it flow widely, to others. Being too comfortable, amenable, pliable to the point of contorting yourself — is a ticket to selling your soul right up the river. Don’t buy it. When you live from your own knowing-ness, from your gut and your wildly-rooted intelligence, you feel alive. Genuinely, madly, creatively alive. Being real — true to your Self, your soul — is gritty. And grit causes friction, makes fire to clear the way for living a revolutionary act. This act is marked by action that the earth and the soul of the world are crying out for. And the cry is going to get louder, more pain-filled, and grievous before enough souls answer wholeheartedly. When you get real, it is actually not about you. Your individual program is only the ground from which you step. From which you step and choose whether you will make this life of yours a walk of grit and beauty, or one of accommodation to the forces that insist you do it their way, be well-behaved, produce, consume, make nice, and as the poet, Mary Oliver says, “barely breathing and calling it a life.” Thing is we’re not talking a self-improvement project; that’s only the gateway. We are being used. By Spirit. One way or the other: we go consciously or we are abducted — individually and collectively, now. So it’s a great time to dive in. When we realize we have no choice but to offer ourselves up — like a sacrifice — to the mystery of Great Spirit’s guidance, this guidance insists on shaping us as a soul-centered contributor. And we’re in it! Soul’s got us. And Spirit carries us along. We’re goners to those egoic, mechanistic, competitive ways; the ways that have undone the earth and so many souls who walk the earth, swim her waters, send roots down into her and watch from the skies. To inhabit your own core, your vital, knowing center and a soul-centered way of being, you need to do the inner excavation. What we call, in Jungian psychology-speak, Shadow work and in shamanic speak, Underworld soul work, including ego-dismemberment work to heal old wounds and retrieve parts of your soul you had otherwise disowned or split off. We need these pieces of our souls, as well as aspects of our bodies, and our connection with Spirit, and with the earth, along with the Other-than-human-ones and wild intelligent forms of life — to feel deliciously alive, ready to roll, to serve this crying earth and love ’em up. This is real adult work, asking everything of you. And will alter your world completely, but before that happens you’ll be met with severing old ways, dismemberment, metaphoric death, dreams, visions — both lovely and horrifically heart-pounding, yummy, gut-wrenching, Beauty, raging tears, sweet snot, broken open heart, blue-shimmering darkness, warm, comforting light. Rebirth. Love. Hope. A deep sense of connection with it all. And a palpable knowing of what you are for. So it’s a slow dive, a conscious descent into the depths of your soul, the dark ground of your being and your dreams: the Underworld of your psyche. This is vital work — no way around it — to discover what you’ve tucked away in the archetypal Shadow of your own psyche. If you’re lucky you will unearth what you had otherwise disowned to adapt to the egoic, mechanistic, competitive, earth-ravaging ways of modern Western culture. And most often, these pieces of your otherwise whole psyche that you had disowned are what makes you utterly You. Beautifully. Creatively. Wildly alive. Authentically so. You. And you are needed here. Your essential soul’s powers — what you were born with before you lost track of them and they, you — are to be found there, in that excavation into your dark depths, awaiting you to carry them home, like mama leopard carries kitties. With a fierce tenderness, knowing that all life — yours, your beloveds, the earth, humans and other than humans — is at stake. The world needs you to be fully alive. Real. The world needs you to find, bring home and embody your soul’s gifts and healing powers. It’s messy work. It’s what we are for. When you are transparent, you will stand out as you are truly seen. When you are transparent, others can “see through” you into you as your heart and true essence shines. You are clear, direct and kind. You are not an enigma; you don’t leave people scratching their heads wondering what you just said and did. You do not hide. You are honest to the bone. You are courage enfleshed. When you are congruent, you are wholistically aligned. What you think, say, feel in your heart, feel in your body and the actions you take line up to support and reflect each other. You know it in your body, often in your gut, when you put your attention there. Congruent. Authenticity happens in the guts and bowels of your life. Being authentic is the grunt-work of the soul, of any deeply human, spiritual path. Being half here, half there, half-hearted, faking it to look good, strategizing to make things easier for your self — that’s the common way of the unconscious clotted middle, driven by our egoic, addicted culture. It’s a way that lacks wholeheartedness. Lacks real courage to let the heart break. Shatter. Broken whole and holy open to finally know compassion for self, others, earth. To live and love — on-fire, fully alive, juiced and ready to serve. Being authentic and soul-centered costs you your ticket to ride from the collective mainstream to the illusion of safe and secure. And opens the door to your bloody and glistening, broken whole heart — reveals to you the honey of this wildly delicious, messy life. Leaves you and those you touch, feeling radically free. Without choice now. Solid and light. Authenticity strips away all that is NOT real. All that is not made from love, to love. All that is of enriched soul and in-spired Spirit remains. There is no living a soul-centered life without being authentic — without mustering the courage to do the excavating in the dark: the Shadow work. Again, C. G. Jung: “People will do anything, no matter how absurd, to avoid facing their own souls.” What will you do? © 2014 Melissa La Flamme