Mystic Consciousness

A relationship with the mystic in life, nature, the way of all things ushers us into a healing connection with self and significant others. It proves itself a balm in the midst of pulls to find answers outside of self, as is the case in addiction. I remember as a teenager a yogi telling me that mystic consciousness is "the natural high." Now, fifty years later, his words continue to ring true and satisfy my soul!

Lisa Miller of Columbia University recently wrote in the New York Times (2.11.14)research shows that "a personal relationship with a higher power is the most powerful form of protection against the unsuccessful grasp at what william James (the father of American psychology) called the 'mystic consciousness' of substance abuse, and for those in recovery against relapse. While we usually can return to transcendence through reflection and practice, this is not so when we pop in as a tourist, through drugs."

The alchemical Doctrine of Correspondence, "as above so below" takes us into bliss, the natural high, that comes from soulful depth. We can only genuinely feel as well, healthy, as we are living from an authentic place of truth to self and meaningful others. Correspondence means staying in touch, maintaining contact, relationship with self and intimate others. 

Mystic consciousness kindles bliss as fire provides warmth. Bliss glows from deep within. It lingers and is furthered through a reflective self, the practice of meaning and forsaking that which has ceased to be meaningful. "We are constituents of the absolute's eternal field of consciousness," wrote James. The mystic takes us within, to absolute consciousness. There we absorb the healing balm of soulful bliss, a natural high.

Seeds of Potential

Seeds of potential present themselves in everyday life events. The moment, each moment, gives us a seed, maybe more. There's something to see about ourselves or others or the unfolding dimensions of our life. These are seeds and they carry life potential. To be able to see them, spot them, can be as simple as raising our awareness.

Awareness works the soil, takes us into the digging under and the under going of what it is that needs to speak to us. Without awareness we traipse along going through one thing after another, nothing really effecting us, nothing taken in, nothing ingested, absorbed as psychic nutrient. We end up going through things with the shock or trauma, the unhappiness, the pain or joy not being metabolized. We go through things on the surface, they stay on our surface, we surface it along through life and end up skating over and so having to go through the same old thing over and over because we never allowed it, things, happening, and ourselves to dig down deep and under. It's the under going in life that works in the seeds of potential in the fertile ground of upsetting and stressful life situations.

"The art of the fire and the key to alchemy means learning how to warm, excite, enthuse, ignite, inspire the material at hand, which is also the state of one's nature so as to activate it further into a different state." James Hillman, depth psychologist and scholar of all things alchemical, wrote of this alchemy of seeds, the material at hand, what life dishes out to us to work into the soil of our being. Seeds present themselves everyday, every moment, so we can see them, spot them, raise our awareness and work them, our nature, so as to activate ourselves "into a different state."

Inner Truth

"The root of all influence lies in one's own inner being: given true and vigorous expression in word and deed, its effect is great.." The I Ching speaks to inner psychic energy influencing our outer life. Our energy is off, our life is off. There is no way to back away from this inner truth or pretend it's not there. We try to run from inner truth, it gets us smack dab in our everyday life.

Ever felt like something is so wrong and you just can't put your finger on it. That something is always on the inside. It had its beginnings with a fear, a lie, denial of some sort. Then, things start churning, guilt and shame about the fear or lie or denial start burning and get acted out in everyday life. Something out of the blue hits and we feel bad. We've made ourselves suffer for the inside thing we didn't want to face.

The mind blowing reality is that we can deal with outer drama as though it were a dream. Inner truth acts itself out as drama in our everyday life. We can listen to the unfolding as we would a symbol. Symbols carry psychic energy that has a message, conveys inspiration, and generates the potential for change. A person told me that they felt stuck. Nothing was particularly wrong. And nothing was particularly right either. Their life energy was stagnant. This was its own form of dramatic enactment.

One day as they were slugging along in their life a roadrunner sped past, right in front of them, inches from where they stepped. It shocked them. It struck them as lightening out of the heavens. It energized them out of their psychological rut. "I quickly turned my head to look for it. It was gone. It was like it came out of a dream. It was a spirit guide that came and did what it did then disappeared. That's how I took it because that's what made sense to me."

Inner truth as waking dream. Symbols as they come in daily life. Messages everywhere if we will but listen, see, take in and understand. Life gives us chances, hope, meaning, opportunities to feel inner truth and to let its effect be great!

In Your Own Skin!

"You know I consider myself lucky. I found myself a long time ago. And I'm grateful for that...It really just means being comfortable in your own skin. That's all enlightenment is, isn't it? The Buddhists can do their crazy calisthenics, their marathons of silence and ritual bullshit, but at the end of the day if someone's happy in their own skin, that's the Buddha. People think they need that perfect job or perfect inspiration or perfect spiritual practice but all anyone wants or needs is peace of mind." ---The Empty Chair by Bruce Wagner

This quote reminds me of how hard we make the process of enlightenment. Often, it's with us far more than we imagine. We look here and there, do austerities, and all the time it's in the moment. We pass up moments. Moments of awe, gratitude, wonder surrounding and drenching us. It's the drenching part, I believe, that frightens us. We want, even crave, peace of mind, being content in our skin; but, so often our healthy desire is from a distance.

People come in for depth psychotherapy and say they feel they're jumping out their skin. It's anxiety. It's the everyday crazies. It's as though we crave peace of mind, but find ourselves colluding with uptight, anxious, crazy ways of living. Dreams are taken over by bugs. We say we're buggy, jumpy, jittery.

We're jumping out of our skin because we need to be out of our skin. The old ways don't work anymore. They need to be shed. The rigid ashram Buddhas, old plastic Jesus, deities of dogma be gone! Human skin, deep psyche, flesh and blood and bone, passion, caring, dreams and visions are the stuff of enlightenment, the peace of mind that makes us comfortable in our own, new, skin!

Holiday Frenzies, Winter Mysteries and the Feminine Soul!

The mystery of the feminine unifies life. Holiday stress takes away from sense of self and well being. Feminine mystery is a sacred order imbued into existence, a far cry from the outer, masculine, rush rush of holiday season buying and meeting up and dysfunctional family gatherings. Sacredness, respected and honored in daily life, turns us within, to soul. Contrary to holiday frenzies, winter, a time of retreat, takes us into soul mysteries. It's a call into an interior cave, illuminating as fire, as whispers in the night.

The cave, the realm of winter mysteries, is a spiritual reality. Winter bids us turn within, to a deepening spirituality. This speaks to solitude, quiet, sustained interiority. "When an inner situation is not made conscious, it appears outside of you as fate," C.G. Jung noted. The draw of winter is the draw toward inwardness, feminine archetypal energy. Without going into the cave during this season, to the place where inner situations are made conscious, we are vulnerable to the fate of destructive irritability and black moods.

The soul is feminine; so to be out of touch with soul leaves us out of sorts. By the end of the year, stresses have mounted. We need time to turn within, access primal feminine energies, to let go and replenish. The outer world beckons, even demands, more and more energy output. The deal with the devil is give more and you'll get more. Downside to that is what the more is that we get is not what we bargained for.

Too much masculine energy going out unbalances us. This is especially true during the holidays when much is expected. It's hard not to tie into social and familial demands that leave us running here and there, often frantically. We complain of feeling off. Nestling within, into the cave of deep soul, can offset the holiday frenzy that fates us with irritation and bad moods. We needn't live out or be possessed by fateful moods. Moods hurt self and others. They're to be learned from and then shed like an old skin. Mysteries of feminine energy await us as we enter the winter cave of hibernation, time for solitude, quiet and renewal of self!

Awakening the Divine Feminine!

The divine feminine entrances me. The term, the concept, the energy sends me into a trance state of altered perception, consciousness, insight. I know when it happens because there's a quality of leaving behind disconnected ways of thinking and being. Rather than, logic, control, dominance being in charge, I'm more open to intuition, flow, interconnections. This is the living energy of the divine feminine.

The divine feminine shows up in dreams and in cultural events. December is the month that celebrates the Assumption of Mary within institutional religion. Psychologically it is about a world changing frame of mind, an altered state of consciousness, that heals the dissociation between spirit and nature. Within the yogic world, Shakti is the divine feminine presence, energy that pulsates through the universe bringing things to life. That which is ailing or less than true to self or nature is healed, made whole, through the intercession of this feminine force.

She is awakened through dreaming. Life, in many respects, is a waking dream. We are living our stories, our myth, our way of being in the world, quite often in a dramatic manner. We have conflicts, we quarrel, we have ups and downs, we are happy and sad, are angry and love. This is life. This is what it means to be human. This is Shakti, the Black Madonna, Mary the Virgin Goddess of the Heavens.

Through the years more than one person has told me something like, "I sometimes wonder if I'm in a dream and dreaming my life and that one day I'll wake up." We're definitely in a dream, the Divine Feminine pulsating with the dream narrative, the drama of daily life that fashions us into the being we, by nature, were meant to be. This is the Divine Feminine, nature's vibrant energy, coursing through us and transforming us into whole human beings.

Awakening the Divine Feminine happens naturally as we dream that life that we are living and dreaming and awakening to each day and every moment as circumstances and relationships take us by surprise and we open our eyes to the always new discovery, a trance state directed into the self, of the Divine Feminine in the world, in life, and in the soul!

Soul, Holiday Haunting, and the Blues!

The holidays are coming, and so are the blues. They hit when everybody around us is so happy. All of a sudden a pit opens up inside you and you're there. Depressed.

A depressed soul is a haunted soul. James Hollis in his book, Hauntings: Dispelling the Ghosts Who Run Our Lives, notes that the greatest haunting we suffer is a lost relationship to soul. When the relationship to soul is lost something has crept into us and taken its place. Traumatic holidays, dysfunctional families, toxic religious experiences are ghosts that can come haunting during the holidays.

"Christmas for me was like being forced into a religious straitjacket," remembered  a particularly insightful young man. Another person added, "I dream of huge Christmas trees and everybody is very, very happy. It's denial. Holidays bring stress and everybody goes into super happy mode with their huge trees and expensive presents to cope...to deny."

Chances are if you're holiday anxious you could be haunted. Anxiety and the holiday blues go together. It's called agitated depression holiday version. Bad memories pushed away, present day stress denied, trigger a host of destructive spirits, negative and anxious attitudes. It's the holiday blues.

Holiday commercialism is rolling down the highway like a sixteen wheeler mowing down anyone in its path. Department stores are staying open for Thanksgiving and Christmas. It won't stop. So, best thing to consider is to stop ourselves. Stop and move into self and stay there, sequestering the haunting and the blues!