|
Our Sacred Journey:
Opportunities, Habit, and Intentions
Times of chaos and change offer great opportunities: for stepping onto a different path; for building new tracks; for cellular reconstruction. Think of these opportunities as portals, as openings into the rest of your life!
Habits-in-the-Way
All of us develop habits of living, coping, and avoiding. Our habits are often unconscious; often self-defeating; and often hide our sense of powerlessness. We eat under stress. We drink or smoke to relax. We yell to get rid of frustration. We negotiate to get control. We watch 8 hours of TV/day to forget. We spend money we do not have. And so on.
For us westerners, the challenge is to avoid the internal dialogue that keeps us stuck in old habits, stuck in our closed version of reality. It's the stories we tell over and over that reinforce what was, leaving little room for other possibilities. It's our internal dialogue that often leads us into blame: what's wrong, why it's not our fault, why it is the fault of someone else.
Sometimes no amount of "talk therapy" will fix things. In cases of extreme or repetitive trauma, which can lead to the development of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), the limbic (reptilian) brain rules, and fight-or-flight responses dominate. We now understand that a traumatized person must have different experiences, and create a new identity, to replace the limbic responses.
It's complex, and it takes some work to "create a new identity." Disbelief, excuses, ingrained habit, or not-really-wanting-to-change can get in the way. A lot of people are wandering around traumatized, due to the dislocations of economic trauma (about 7 million foreclosures in US, 24% unemployment in Spain), along with fear, violence, and deep cultural divisions.
Developing Intent
Whether we're responding to trauma around us or to our own commitment to meet 2012 challenges in a different way, we're all seeing opportunities for laying different tracks.
Once we perceive the choices an opening offers, we can develop our intent: the attention, passion, spirit, and direction we focus on our energetic response and our attitude.
Here's an example. At our new year's sharing of intentions, one of my friends vowed to smile at everyone as she goes through her day. Smiling changes her energy; gives her a different focus (maybe she was frowning and creating wrinkles?); and opens her heart. For every recipient of her smile, there's a possibility of joyful shifts of energy, a minute of connection, a re-minder of what's important. All with the simple intent to smile!
Intent can include how we want to feel; what support we'd like to seek; what we need to let go of; what changes in lifestyle we are willing to make (or not); what we want to understand (what is not clear about the problem/chaos, or what to do); what daily practices will help us; how we want to talk about our issue; and what kind of response from others would help us.
Intent encompasses purpose, but shies away from will, which is a mental response. Intent can include a conscious alignment of our energy (with, for example, smiles instead of frowns). It is with intent--the way one chooses to cross the portal's threshold--that one creates meaning.
The Sacred Journey
Stepping through a portal has all the potential of a sacred journey: seizing an opening, entering, choosing the way to move, finding meaning along the path, overcoming obstacles, and changing as result of the journey.
Humankind's earliest written story of sacred journey tells of the Sumerian Goddess Inanna. She must shed all her garments and jewels--symbols of her power--as she passes through seven gates to reach the underworld. Inanna arrives only with her naked intent, the clear sense of purpose that guides and sustains her actions and emotions. When she returns from the underworld, she uses the power of her intent to continue on her path, despite the cost and changes incurred. (See Wolkstein, Diane and Samuel N. Kramer, Inanna: Queen of Heaven and Earth, NY: Harper and Row, 1983.)
Perceiving change as an energetic opening creates a wider vision for us, one that incorporates the mystery and challenge of the unknown. It makes it possible to take in feelings as well as thoughts, spirit as well as matter. It makes it possible to see ourselves with a place in the universe: not the whole, not God, but one energetic piece.
Finding full answers requires activation of body, heart, and mind. Focusing on breath and inner silence disconnects us from the fixed, and allows fluidity and expansion. When we experience and perceive everything as alive, interconnected, and energetically interdependent, we gain space to expand and to change.
Intention and Decree
Our words, and the intentions they express, carry energy, so it is really important to reflect carefully on what we are trying to manifest. The process can help us clarify desire and notice any hesitations we have, as well as the strength we are carrying. Only if we discover that we are putting limitations on the outcome can we address those limitations.
We can ask questions:
How does the challenge of this opening mirror my old issues?
Who are my allies (friends, skills, thought forms, spirit helpers)?
What vision, creative focus, attitudes shall I bring to this process?
What energetic stance do I want to carry into the opening?
It really helps to express intent as a decree. A decree engages our power, our heart-perception, and our internal authority. For example:
"I see my family (self, partner, child) healthy, strong, energized, whole, and joyful."
"I create a world where the breath of spirit flows from heart to heart."
"I see myself in a fulfilling, sustainable, stimulating job."
"I create a world where we perceive the living energy in all things."
Working from the heart, it's good to fill in the details. For example, if my intent is to be healthy, I might say with every meal and every time of exercise, "I feed my health, balance, and energy. I intend to strengthen muscles and release pain. I forgive myself everything I cannot do, and did not do." If my intent is to lessen stress, I might remind myself, "Worry causes heaviness. I see myself light and radiant." The more we envision our new path, the more likely it is to happen!
As Lynn McTaggert writes in The Field, "...the art of seeing is one of transforming. We create space and time on the surface of our retinas. The image of the world is actually a virtual creation." (p 84).
If we are creating a virtual image of the world, we can change it. We can lay down a new track to follow, choose a different path, release a habit if that's truly our intent.
Dr. Seuss' Advice
In Oh, the Places You'll Go! by Theodore Geisel (Dr. Seuss), we're advised:
"You have brains in your head.
You have feet in your shoes.
You can steer yourself
any direction you choose.
You're on your own.
And you know what you know.
And YOU are the guy
who'll decide where to go."
So keep walking into these portals of change, one step at a time!
Meg Beeler/Earth Caretakers
Copyright � 2012
| | Star Despacho Mt. Shast |
"Be the shift inside you, then you can communicate the shift and hang out with the people who are kind of resonating at the same frequency. In the end, things do evolve because that's the nature of consciousness-it struggles, it experiments, it fails, and it takes creative leaps...The result over time is that the advantages to those living in a unified field naturally emerge." -- Deepak Chopra
"The brains of happy people are tuned to notice and enjoy the positives in life that may pass others by. Their happy dispositions and set them up for a 'cycle of positivity.' The positive outlook on life was not a reflection of naivety or ignorance of the world's threats and dangers, but an enhanced response to positive events and the opportunities around them." --Ian Sample
| 
