|
The Physical and the Metaphysical:
Body Reflecting Spirit
Our bodies experience and mirror what is happening in the larger world: the physical and the metaphysical are entwined. If we listen carefully, and ask about our physical manifestations, we can learn useful and interesting lessons about our own consciousness and that of the world body. Our bodies are also key to our evolution. A message brought forth by Aluna Joy, a mystic and channeler of messages from other dimensions, tells us: "This time the test/challenge is to awaken and shift in the human body. It is the first time the earth is going to shift where the awakened ones will not leave in spaceships, or go into the mountains, or into underground golden cities like in Peru, or go back to the stars. We are going to evolve in a physical body. We need to keep our humbleness, so we can also have compassion to feel what everyone is going through during this time. This is what makes us healers. So we have to stretch to hold the immensity of brilliance of who we are while being human. [Fourth Message from Egypt, Temple of Isis, Philae, March 2011] Expressed another way, it's important to understand the spiritual dimensions of what we are experiencing physically. An illness may reflect larger conflict in the world, or lead us into awareness of a different consciousness; a sudden burst of energy can be a key to our evolution. Our bodies give us clues for both personal and global consciousness shifting. The Physical Challenges the Metaphysical These issues have been at the forefront for me personally during the last four months of physical challenges. Multiple body parts seemed to fail and flail one after another. Knocked out by pain, barely having energy to get through my days, I blamed myself. I questioned everything: my habits, intent, and responsibility. I kept trying to understand the lessons and return to balance and health. In the process, I relearned a very old lesson: if your physical body doesn't keep up with your spirit (if you have great mystical experiences but cannot integrate them), dissonance arises and you cannot move forward on any level. During my recovery, I asked spirit to explain the energetic and spiritual imbalances being manifested on the physical level. I asked what I needed to do. The surprising guidance had to do with feelings of separation. I learned, first, that many old beliefs and habits of perception had colored and contributed to the buildup of toxins and disease in my body. Old grief, desire for (attachment to) being seen as special, loneliness, isolation, not allowing the joyous to prevail, a sense of not being entitled, fear of my power: all these old subconscious feelings had helped make me ill, even though I had largely let go of their power over me in the present, even though spirit described them as "largely residual." I saw that my tangled innards were inexorably tied to the vine of the soul and the little deaths of transformation begun many years ago in the jungle. I was told, "The demon was your assumption of otherness and separation from your own body. You can't heal until you fully embrace interbeing, the interconnectedness of all things...We want to teach you that separateness and interbeing are part of the human condition, like light and shadow, illness and health. You need have no shame, but awareness: which do you feed? Which do you choose?" I was given healing gifts of insight and huge support from friends. I performed ceremonies for transforming my old beliefs. Yet I continued to lose heart and feel conflicted. Until I accepted the physical realities fully--this is my body, this is my pain, this is what I must attend to now--I wasn't able to fully discover the meaning and use the metaphorical gifts to step out of frustration and into transformation. The Larger View: Internalized Beliefs and The Great Fix Many years ago a young writer under my supervision at Apple Computer said to me, "You never tell me what I've done well, only what I need to fix or improve." I was shocked: to understand that I was not offering praiseful support, and to see that I was replicating, unconsciously, how my parents had treated me. This is human: we all carry on learned behaviors, and we are often deeply unconscious of what we are doing. So, it was a great gift in my life (thank you, Susan!) to see so clearly a behavior I wanted and needed to change. It was easier to alter my response to others than to end my internalized "not enough" thinking. Even during this current illness, many years later, it became clear that such thinking was fueling my struggle and my impatience to get well. I often notice in us (me, you, my clients, my family, my friends) a desire for the Great Fix: we want the shaman/healer/doctor to take away our illness or our suffering. The Great Fix is totally embedded in our thinking and reinforced with advertising ("Take this pill and your allergies/insomnia/depression will go away!"), by politicians, doctors, and salespeople, and by our very human desire for things to be easy. What's more true and realistic is that the Great Fix is illusion. The pill, the surgery, the shamanic healing, and the ceremony are cures. We forget, resist, or don't understand that our own follow-through is the healing and our behavior is key to the transformation. Working Together for Transformation As an energetic and spiritual healer, my calling is to offer my experience, wisdom, and tools to help people step onto a different path and way of perceiving, to step into a different consciousness. That's my intent when I write these blogs, when I teach, and when I work with people individually. What I can do as a healer is open the way, by shifting your energy, removing something that doesn't belong, bringing back something that does belong to you. It can feel really good in body, mind, and spirit in the moment. Yet the cure will not become a long-term healing unless we apply our own intent, and follow through with spirit-given prescriptions and ceremonies. Our old habits and behaviors will reassert; we'll return to where we started. This reciprocal process is the same as when we work with a personal coach or counselor: they can guide us for months, but if we don't try the new approach, the new behavior they are guiding us towards, not much changes. Similarly, if we don't follow the prescriptions of the shaman/healer and the spirits, we're saying "I really do not want to change." The problem is that we believe what we think. Our preverbal brains (the limbic brain, the one without words) contain the residue of traumatic experiences (violence, rape, war, abandonment, and so on), years of preverbal childhood experience, and subconscious learning-by-example from our families. Any of these can sabotage what we think we want to happen; affirmations cannot work when the subconscious mind and old beliefs hold sway. When we address our preverbal sabotaging beliefs, we can step towards the creativity, radiance, and change that are our essence. This is where our intent, our choices, and our willingness to get help and follow it helps us engage. The kinds of questions we can ask as we sort out the metaphors and teachings our bodies offer us include: · What path am I following with my actions? · What energies am I feeding with my intent? · Are my perceptions aligned with my ideas and beliefs? · Am I being kind and forgiving to myself? · What kind of environment am I creating in my body each day? Our consciousness affects the world. I thank each of you for your efforts, large and small, to help our world body move towards radiant, balanced, and peaceful transformation! Meg Beeler Earth Caretakers  | | Supported on All Sides |
"Anything that we are aware of at a given moment forms part of our consciousness, making conscious experience at once the most familiar and most mysterious aspect of our lives." -- Max Velmans and Susan Schneider "When the forms of an old culture are dying, the new culture is created by a few people who are not afraid to be insecure." -- Rudolf Bahro "Disappointment only occurs when there is expectation. So instead of expectation with some attachment to outcome, have a strong intention to have a spectacular experience however the environment supports it." -- Lena Stevens | 
