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Greetings!
Happy Spring! I hope that you are enjoying all of the new life blooming all around you.
In
this newsletter you will find:
* Feature article titled Making the Shift. This is my best attempt at providing a concise explanation on the why and how of making the shift from ego to essence to a life filled with the peace, passion, purpose, power and presence of Radical Wholeness.
* A short piece on the great I AM and my invitation to use it as an acronym to remember of how to remain in Essence.
* A unique opportunity to experience the SOULutions Ego to Essence Core Wound Release at no cost during the month of May.
* This Tuesday's Free Essence Circle featuring the Breath Of the Heart Meditation. You will not want to miss this.
Hope to see you soon!
Consider forwarding this along to anyone who may benefit.
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Making the Shift
Why and the How
"It is the best of times and the worst of times." These are the familiar words of Charles Dickens from the novel A Tale Of Two Cities. Seems fitting in today's times. With the financial melt down, high rate of unemployment, threats of terrorism and all of the devastation taking place around the planet, it certainly seems like we are in the worst of times.
Yet, it is the best of times. Why? More people on the planet are waking up than at any other time. The evidence is in the popularity of Eckhart Tolle's New Earth and the research done by Arjuna Ardagh and reported in his book The Translucent Revolution. People seem to be genuinely interested in making the shift from a fear based ego driven life to one more grounded in spiritual essence. It's the necessary shift that the world must make in order to change our direction from the destructive path that we are headed down to a path that honors the evolutionary impulse of life to grow towards greater consciousness and wholeness.
This article is intended to:
Provide you with my understanding of the benefits to making this shift and give you the practical and doable steps to do so.
let's begin by defining ego and essence and making some important distinctions between them. I love to go right to the dictionary to see how close or far away my own, sometimes abstract, understanding of a word matches the one in the dictionary. Merriam-Webster offers the following definitions:
Ego: The self especially as contrasted with another self or the world.
Essence: The individual, real, or ultimate nature of a thing especially as opposed to its existence.
Simply put, our ego is the part of us that recognizes our separate, finite and temporary bodies. Because of this identification with the limited self, the experience is one of fear with the focus of attention is on protecting this self and getting ahead. This leads to all of the ego's protecting and proving strategies. And, if taken to far, prevent us from the experience of intimacy and wholeness that we seek and is the source of all the violence, wars and destruction of our beautiful planet.
Why make the shift? Short answer is more Peace, Power, Purpose, authentic Power and Presence in your life, the 5P"s of Radical Wholeness. When we are connected with our essence, the experience is one of being in touch with Spirit. When the core of our identity is more aligned with the whole of life than our finite ego self, we relax and become more interested in expressing our authentic uniqueness for a purpose that in some large or small way serves life. This identification with Essence leads to the expressing and connecting behaviors that provide us with the deep intimacy and the experience of wholeness that we've been seeking all along.
Every one of us has two core drives: One is for our individual separate self to survive and thrive in a world. This is the proper and necessary function of a healthy ego. Dr. Richard Moss calls this the first miracle. Think about what an absolute miracle the ego is. For the first time God, Spirit, The Universe, Life can be aware of Itself!
Along with the birth of the ego comes more suffering and more love and possibility than the Universe has ever known. I'm not a parent, but for those of you who are, is the birth of and raising of your own child a fitting parallel? Dr. Richard Moss has written about this in his book "The Second Miracle." While the ego and it's birth of self consciousness may be the first miracle, we can make now create the second miracle. How? With our own personal commitment to consciousness, together we can realize our deepest collective purpose, creating haven on earth.
The second and deeper drive within each of us is for wholeness. It's the universal desire within the individual soul to merge with the whole. I'm referring to the experience of unity, love, connection with spirit, oneness, peace beyond all understanding...by whatever name, it's the experience of being finally and deeply at home. The Sufi poet, mystic and spiritual philosopher Rumi would likely call this the insatiable longing to reunite with our beloved.
So, what does it mean to make the shift from ego to essence to living a life of Radical Wholeness? Simply put, it's appreciating the value of the ego while recognizing its limitations. It's allowing your ego to be a vehicle to help you get to where you are going on time and knowing all the while that you, in your essence are in the drivers seat. This is in contrast to a life dominated by the ego with it being in the drivers seat with little or no awareness of his essential nature. He is the one blowing the horn for you to get out of the way so he can get where he is going because he is more important than you.
How do We Make the shift?
It's important for me to emphasis here that there is no simple formula that is true for everyone and it's seldom a linear journey. In my own experience it's actually more of a spiral of transformation that grows from rigid ego dominated thinking spiraling upward towards wholeness with greater degrees of flexibility, consciousness and present moment awareness.
Here are the steps that I have experienced both on my own life and with numerous clients.
1. Recognize and release your Core Wound. At the root of every ego is the fear bast thought: "I'm not enough and wont have enough." Each of us has our own different version this one limiting belief. Common examples are: "I'm bad", "I'm unworthy" "I'm unlovable", "I'm flawed", I'm weak." Somewhere during our early conditioning we made this limiting conclusion about us by comparing ourselves with others. This created what I call a core wound. Many of us have spent a large portion of our lives attempting to hide from, cover up or overcompensate for this one wound, at the root of our ego. This takes a lot of energy and moves us away from our Essence. When you stop running from and are willing to fully face, feel and embrace this core wound on a mental, emotional, physical(somatic) and energetic level, it is finally released.
2. Recognize and let go your ego's proven strategy designed to compensate for this core fear. At opposite of the ego's fear based thought of not being enough is the compensatory desire to be more than or better than others in some way that makes us extra special. For example, if some has the core wound of feeling unlovable, they may have an inflating ego strategy of going out of their way to be loving, helpful and pleasing while pretending to have no needs of their own. Someone with the core fear of not measuring up may have a proving strategy of always needing to be seen as superior. They are driven more by looking successful and gaining acquisitions than truly connecting with others and being of authentic value. Once the core wound has been released, the ego's proving strategy has to go as well, if this liberated
state is to remain.
3. Discover and contribute the authentic talents, skills, strengths and passions that naturally emerge from your Essence. Now that your focus of attention is on expressing your gifts for a purpose that serves Life rather than your ego trying to prove that you are somehow a little extra special, you experience your essential specialness. This is a real, yet humble kind of specialness. It comes with the realization that you are being a good steward of the gifts that Life has entrusted in you with a kind of surrendered purpose. This may feel like a merging of your individual uniqueness with the universal whole.
So, the formula is....
- Ego's core fear and inflating opposite
+ Contributing gifts from Essence
= RADICAL WHOLENESS
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I AM
What image comes to mind when you see or hear I AM? Mosses asking "Who are you?" A thundering voice from the sky?
When I think of I AM, I think the spiritual essence that is the source of all of creation and transcends every religion. I use the symbol above as a simple reminder of the principles involved in making the shift from ego to essence as discussed in the article above.
The symbol translates to: NOT less
than. NOT more than. I AM.
"I AM" is an acronym that stands for:
I - Intentionally grounding myself in my spiritual essence, an authentically unique expression of the whole.
+
A - Attention on contributing the gifts
that life has entrusted in me, as fully and consciously as I am able, with strength and love.
=
M - Manifesting of all my physical,
emotional, mental and spiritual needs.
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FREE Ego to Essence Core Wound Release Sessions during
the month of May
During the month of May, I'm giving away 20 Core Wound Release sessions to people who have not yet experienced this powerfully liberating process.
Why am I
giving away these 20 session? During a deep and profound SOZO
meditation/prayer that
I was recently guided through (Sozo
is a Greek word meaning "to make
whole"), what came through so load
and clear was: "give away the one thing that will provide the right
people with the most value." The experience was so profound that I want
to be a good steward of the insight that came through. That's it!Click HERE to get the back story and all the details.
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New Essence Circle Format
Join me this Tuesday, May 4th from
7-9 pm at the Body Awareness Studio on Roswell Rd for the BREATH OF THE HEART Meditation. This is partnered
breathwork and heart to heart connecting exercise that has been part of
the Friday evening portion of the FIRE
Of Wholeness Breakthrough Experience from the beginning. People
almost always report it as being one of the most heart opening and soul
connecting processes that they have experienced. It combines conscious
breathwork with what the Indian Yogi's call Puja. The result is a
profound recognition of your own wholeness and the experience of oneness
with another.
New day and location: Starting in June, Essence Circles will held on the first Monday of the month at Fernand Poulin's White Winds School of Energy Medicine in Dunwoody. Each Circle will include an experiential process that leads
to a state of Radical Wholeness. This
includes breathwork processes like The BREATH Of Life, Dolphin
Meditation, Chakra Breathing, Breath Walking as well as other
experiential modalities like Trance Dance, Five Rhythms, Osho Meditations and more.
Graduates of The FIRE Of Wholeness or
the Finding Radical Wholeness Private
Session Program will occasionally be
leading our Circles as a part of their "essence expression." Janice Lightsey (AKA, Fierce Grace) will be leading us in Yoga Dance in July.
June's Essence Circle will include the loved Dolphin Meditation.
Click HERE to learn more.
Hope to see you Tuesday! |
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Dedicated to helping individuals and couples find and live their most unique expression of wholeness.
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Michael Casteel
SOULutions |
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