Engaging the Enchanted World

Posted on May 7, 2017 by mcallister

Enchanted World

What is the beginning? Being. And from Being all things come. The creation of the Universe is an ongoing event. Just ask the cosmologists. Creation happens within an aspect of Being condensing into form. Being is always there, underneath, in between, behind, surrounding, and within. When Being births a desire into form and matter, what it creates is not kicked out into the wilderness of a random, uncaring, manifest mundane existence. Being is still present. Always.

As human beings we have mostly forgotten this. Rather, we know it deeply, but our attention has been caught up in the web of the mundane, the quest for physical control and survival. While part of us knows the presence of Being, part of us is asleep, dreaming a different dream within the one dreamed by Being. We are capable creators, and so we dream our dream and think it is the only reality. Focused on the dream of the ego/mind, we have lost the ability to be aware of the larger dream of Being. Even though it flows around us, through us, sustaining and nourishing us in spite of our indifference.

In the ego dream of the modern world, we have staked everything on our independence, our autonomy, our separateness. This movement had benefits, but has been carried too far. We are meant to learn to be sovereign, and then integrate back into the larger dream. The hero’s journey involves a phase of separation and consequent discovery, but is only complete when she returns to the community, bearing the treasure of new wisdom.

We have collectively gone deeply into the places of separation and autonomy. Unless we can return to the larger whole, reconnect with the larger dream of Being, we are lost in a collective delusion.

The world is enchanted, it is sacred. We are sacred, no matter how lost we have become. We are always the children of Being, nurtured and supported in the Universal womb of Consciousness. It is only our perception that changed. What we are looking for is literally in our hearts, in our cells, in our atoms.

The whole universe is in constant communication, from atoms and particles, to photons and stars. We live in a web of quantum energetic flow and interaction.

Practice: Pick up a small object. Let it rest in the palm of your hand. Give it your attention, from a place of gentle curiosity. Let go of what you think you know about it and open to feeling. Notice the awareness that occurs. Listen. Remember a time when you felt Love, gave unconditional regard, appreciative attention, or connected with Joy. Feel it in your heart now. It is a state of Being your heart knows. Let it radiate to this small object in your hand. Notice what you receive.

Choose to do this anywhere, anytime. Just because. The object in your hand is already infused with Being. It is enchanted. When you experience it from Love, giving attention and appreciation, it becomes sacred in your experience. Because you have chosen to experience it that way. You are remembering how to have a conscious conversation with the Universe, with Being. This conversation inherently enchants and makes sacred. The more you practice, the more your world will be magical, joyous and sacred.

Gratitude for playing. This is the most important thing we have to do as human beings: Open to what already IS.

(© 05/2017)

Posted in Energy, Inspiration, Metaphysics, Nature, Newsletter | Leave a comment

Grounding and Manifestation

Posted on May 6, 2017 by mcallister

by Alan McAllister, CCHt PhD-phys published in Shakti Yogi Journal

Prolog
We live now in what the ancient Chinese might call interesting times. In today’s world there seem to be layer after layer of stresses, inner and outer. The outer and the inner affect each other, in many ways they help create each other. In order to find peace in our selves we must learn to separate from the outer and engage selectively only with things that nourish and nurture us. In times like these we may also be interested in how we can contribute to creating a more positive outer world that we share with others. Manifesting positively outside ourselves and taking ownership of our inner life are intimately related, as what we manifest mirrors and reflects our inner state of Being.

The sanctity of our inner being starts with grounding.

California Redwoods

Redwoods
On the peninsula south of San Francisco I once lived in a small house full of a varied group of young men. We each had our own way of being, our own intensities, concerns, and joys. These did not always mesh harmoniously. Outside there was a world full of more people, roads, buildings, cars. It wasn’t fully urban like San Francisco but the energy was pervasive and busy, often stressful. To find a clear inner space, I developed a habit of driving up into the hills. There was one place in particular where I could jump a fence and climbing a grassy rounded hill, lie on top, and let the tension and stress of the valley soak away into the earth.

Once I drove further and found myself over the crest, down into the redwoods that grow above the ocean north of Santa Cruz. Walking into the cool, shady, groves I could palpably feel the energy of the towering, ancient, trees. Roots connecting deep into the earth, their calm clear presence created a field that invited my accumulated tension to ground and dissipate. In that naturally sacred place I felt an inner peace and relaxation that matched the fresh fragrance of the surrounding air.

As my being released the energies of the valley that didn’t serve me, that had entered my space in the busyness of daily life, there was room for me to recharge, to fill in with the life force of the earth, of my Self, and of Spirit. An early lesson in the energetics of my personal space; how I can take on discordant energies, especially when I am already anxious, and how I can also choose to clear them out to make space for what does serve me. In those days I hadn’t any formal training or tools that I could use to clear my self, but the redwoods would do it for me when I let them.

Grounding
It is wonderful to be able to visit sacred places, natural or man-made, and let them clear and recharge us. This is the positive side of how we get fogged and drained during time spent in the mundane pursuits of daily life. The outer is determining the inner in both cases. We are all affected by our environment, but perhaps we can learn to manage this, to limit and select what affects us and how? We can learn to do for ourselves what the redwoods so gracefully did for me.

Roots ground those trees deeply into the power of the earth, structurally, biologically, and energetically. On occasion they are also grounded in the electrical sense. Buildings and other structures are grounded with conducting cables. Electrical grounding helps move accumulated charges and electrical tension out of the atmosphere and into the earth. The tension before a thunderstorm is easily felt by humans and animals. It is uncomfortable and may produce irritability. The sense of clearing experienced following a storm is not just because the air is fresher, but also because the electrical tension has dispersed. We can literally breath easier.

Human beings can ground ourselves energetically in a similar way. This grounding brings benefits similar to those that trees provide. The practice of Earthing [1], physically connects your body with the earth, by lying on the grass or walking bare foot on the ground. Using your sacred imagination to create an energetic grounding from the base of your spine into the earth connects your being energetically. When we connect ourselves energetically to the earth, down to its very heart, this connection helps to clear our space of static and tension.

Aura/space
We each have a personal space, called the aura or energy body. You can think of it as an ovoid or rectangular region that encompasses the physical body. Your aura has a boundary. While our physical quantum fields extend mathematically through all space, in practice they merge (not far from your skin) into the general field that we exist in, comprised by the fields of the air, furniture, ground, and other people. Whatever you are in contact with. While this boundary may be conceptual on a physical level, energetically and spiritually it is real. It marks the transition from what is you, your inner personal space, to what is not you, the rest of the world.

Sky & Water

In practice you may not pay any attention to this boundary, you also may not claim and own your personal space very well. When I lived in California much of what happened around me entered unfiltered into my space. People’s emotions, the noise of cars, electro-magnetic waves, generally didn’t stop at this boundary. Although I would claim my personal sovereignty in some ways, there were many in which I didn’t or couldn’t. Thus I benefited greatly from my visits to the trees.

We are all inherently sovereign spiritual beings. As spiritual beings we have complete ownership of our personal space. As human beings there are many ways in which we let go of our sovereignty, or allow others to take it from us. Thus all sorts of energies that originate outside of us enter into our space and fill it up. Some stay briefly and others wind up remaining a long time.

Grounding Space
Electrically a container composed of non-conducting materials, or ungrounded conducting materials, can pick up a static charge, a surplus of loose electrons[2]. This is common in the winter walking across carpets in socks or rubber souled shoes. A distribution of static charge on a non-conducting boundary will determine electric fields inside the space enclosed by that boundary. Grounding the boundary will clear its charge and thus the internal fields as well. Fields generated by external charges will also penetrate through a non-conducting boundary and add to the internal field.

A conducting container can also pick up static charge if it is not grounded, but the charges within the container’s walls, being free to move about, will arrange themselves so as to generate new counter fields, canceling out any fields within the container. The interior will be shielded. Shielded from external fields, but not the affects of static charges. Unless it is also grounded.

The boundary conditions determine what outside fields and accumulated static charges can affect your interior space. This is true physically, but also energetically. In learning to work with our personal boundaries grounding helps to clear static charges and to enhance the shielding of our personal space. Think of movies where people use a wire cage in order to shield themselves from electronic observation.

Imagine your personal energetic space, and the boundary of that space. Ground yourself to the earth and notice what happens. Any extra charges or influences on that boundary, which were affecting the state of the energies inside your space, are now shorted out. The boundary becomes neutral, the same potential as the earth. Once the boundary is neutral and your space is shielded you are no longer at the affect of anything outside.

Any existing patterns of foreign energy inside your space will begin to dissipate, as the internal fields flatten out, becoming uniform. Any imposed stresses or tensions will do the same. Your inner space will now become filled with a uniform relaxed field (except for any internal charges). Whatever is going on around you no longer enters into you and you become independent and free. In this clear neutral space that is created something interesting happens. You can begin to experience the subtle levels of Spirit (always present everywhere), of your own Self. This is why the monastic orders lived away from the world, often in silence, because in physical silence they could cultivate emotional and mental silence and begin to perceive the divine within themselves.

This is not a matter of permanently disengaging from the world and life. It is about being able to consciously disengage when you choose to; about being able to own and clear your inner world of external influences that do not serve you, creating space to Be your Self, to become aware of Spirit, to claim your personal sovereignty.

Sky and Earth

Internal Charges
Internal fields will dissipate once a boundary becomes neutral; unless there are internal charges. These will create a lasting field even when the boundary is grounded [2]. Some of these represent energies that were originally external but have been internalized. Some are our own creations. Some are both. The reduction in external fields clears things enough to allow the identification of held or stored fixed charges (psychic, emotional, or energetic). They may then be examined and released, or reclaimed, depending on their origins and present usefulness. The result is greater harmony and coherence of our self and Self. These processes are part of the spiritual path, in whatever form you are walking it. They are ongoing and layered. In all their variety and detail they occur most gracefully when your space is grounded and therefore not under external pressures.

Manifestation
As we make progress with internal clearing there is space for fresh creation of new charges and fields. These may be aspects of your Essential Self embodying, or the seeds of new external manifestations. To visualize and bring into being the things that do serve us it is useful to have as clear a canvass as possible, to hear only those voices that are truly our own or our guidance. Otherwise our creations are muddied, we may simply pass along what has come from others, or create things that are distorted and ill formed. This is especially true when there is a conflict between old charges (patterns, beliefs) whatever their source (often unconscious) and our present conscious wishes and vision.

The second element necessary for creativity is a flow of energy, like that which comes up the roots and down the branches of a redwood. All manifest systems, structures, and living beings, arise in a flow of energy from source to ground [3]. Usually we draw on external physical sources; air, water, food. We may also learn to draw on emotional and mental sources outside of ourselves. This, however, opens us to external influence and dependence. In the quite of your own being, you can connect to the Source of sources, to Spirit, Divinity, the Life force that supports all existence. As you learn to tap this, letting it flow through you to the ground of the Earth herself, this inner flow allows you, even pushes you, to create from the inside out. Fed by the Earth and the Cosmos, in the quite of a clear heart, we find all the energy and support that we could ever need. This flow of energy drives creation in your inner space; new patterns of being and more efficient ways of managing the ever increasing complexity of the world around you.

Knowing
Inspiration, vision, and creations, arise from the inside, from our Self, powered by Spirit. It is a wondrous thing that the seed, even as it starts to grow underground in early Spring, knows how to grow to become the whole of the plant, even to creating new seeds that continue the cycle. Each manifestation will be a unique individual of its species, but they all will find the light and the air, sprout and put out leaves. A redwood seed will generate a mighty pillar in the forest that may last for over a thousand years.

Sparrow & Mirror

We have within ourselves this same innate sort of knowing; the potential to grow, to become, to create wondrously and magnificently. Learning to ground and own your own space, your own being, allows this knowing to arise with all the simple certainty of the seed. This creativity comes from Spirit, from Self and the Divine. Our minds are not the source, they are rather the means of execution. All we need is to understand the next step and trust ourselves that the pattern will unfold, step by step, into the fullness of the inherent pattern.

When Life and Love flow through us out into the world we may choose to hold our boundaries a little differently. Clearing inner charges related to old wounds and other external influences, leaves useful charges that represent aspects of ourselves (eg chakras) or visualizations that we are energizing mentally, and in our hearts, in order to manifest them in the world.

Projection
In the case of electric fields internal, charges will create internal fields and structures that can best be calculated by a simple technique. They are imagined mirrored across the conducting boundaries. The field produced by the paired charges will then correctly describe the parts that actually exist within the conducting boundary.

With psychic/spiritual charges we tend to do the same thing. This is called projection, where internal charges are imagined out in the world. This is a common psychological protective process that we almost all do unconsciously with things that are uncomfortable or challenging. We project charged images out into the world, or onto other people, and then engage our conscious attention in trying to fix them, being scared of them, and/or trying to control them. Since the source is actually inside ourselves these efforts are not generally effective. Only by coming back into our own being and working with the true sources there can the things we have projected out be resolved [4].

Universal Mirrors

Creative Projection
While this dynamic is something that we generally want to minimize as part of our spiritual path [5], when we are creating from our Self it is actually useful. If we consciously let our inner visualization mirror out into the world, and then give that “imaginary” external image our attention we can call it into manifestation. Attention creates space for things to manifest from the potential possibilities in the Void. [6] This is the import of “collapsing the wave function” in quantum mechanics. It is how we create our lives. Until we wake up we do this largely unconsciously; being either unconscious that we are creating, or unconscious of what the internal source of the creation is.

Ground your Self; clearing and releasing old tensions feel the flow of love, the qualities of harmony and coherence in your being. From this clear and free personal space you can create powerfully and positively in the world. Take actions and create community, but avoid resistance and fear. These will corrupt your Being again. Muddying your internal space, they will feed the worldly mirrors that you want to change and interfere with what you are trying to create. Come back to center, reground and separate from the external. Find your connection to Self, your inner inspiration and vision. Only then, re-engage.

Your ability to ground and own your personal space, free and clear, to channel Self and Source, is the key to impactful positive creation and manifestation in the world. Know that it is also powerful in itself. To own your space and allow Life and Love to fill it up, is the most powerful thing you can do. These fundamental fields effortlessly radiate out to the corners of the planet. This is what the Dalai Lama and other living sages do. This is what you can do. It is the ultimate meaning of Being the change.

References

1. Ober, Clinton, Stephen T. Sinatra, Martin Zucker, Earthing: The Most Important Health Discovery Ever? ‪Basic Health Publications, Inc.‬, 2010
https://books.google.com/books?id=DtQVwPcBrr4C&printsec=frontcover&dq=earthing&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwi3tcjjup_SAhVBzFQKHVqICUEQ6AEIGjAA#v=onepage&q=earthing&f=false

2. Purcell, Edward M., electricity and magnetism – berkeley physics course Vol 2, mcgraw-hill, 1963.

3. McAllister, Alan, Riding Geodesics, SYJ, winter 2017, https://www.shaktiyogijournal.com/riding-geodesics-jaya/

4. Psychological Projection, Wikipedia, viewed 2/20/17, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychological_projection

5. Ruiz, Miguel, Janet Mills, The Four Agreements Companion Book, Amber-Allen Publishing, 2000.

6. McAllister, Alan, Listening to Stillness, SYJ, winter 2015.

Action Items

Earthing: walking on the earth barefoot, image reaching into her with your feet, like a lion grabbing the ground with its paws, feel the power flowing up into you. Lying on the grass, breath in the smell of the earth, let anything in your body that you don’t need flow downwards. Open your heart to her, and receive her love into the space you have emptied. Hug a tree, or sit with your back to it and let your being feel and match its connections into roots and branches.

Grounding: using your sacred imagination to do similar things purely energetically. Connect your root chakra, and your whole aura to the center of the planet. Notice how energies that are not yours, or are completed flow downwards and are received by the planet. She does this gladly. Practice when its easy and you have time. Also when its not and there is no time.

Selective Engagement: Practice awareness around what you receive into your space. What do you listen to? what do you watch? who do you associate with? Do these things serve you or not? This is not a binary, yes/no question. Some things may be fine in small doses, or by filtering out aspects that don’t serve to leave the ones that resonate. Choosing joy over fear is highly beneficial.

Sacred Space: Consider your inner being a sacred space. Like a temple that houses your soul. The clearer it is the more your Soul will be present and the better you can experience it. Thus the better your Self can support you, inform and inspire you. Gently notice what your internal charges are, the things that carry old emotional charge. Practice loving mindfulness with them.

Inner Silence: Notice the ego mind, with its anxieties and fears. When it is chattering, it is hard to hear your Self. Practice releasing it and only listening to it when you choose. Find an activity that allows you to become still and quite. It could be meditation, swimming, or hiking. It might be dancing or singing, or gazing into your beloved’s eyes.

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Compassion and Resonance

Posted on April 6, 2017 by mcallister

Orchestra

Human beings are like an orchestra. Many different instruments, melodies, tones and vibrations sound through our energetic body/being at any given time. Physical, emotional and mental registers are like sections of the orchestra. When these are in harmony, in tune with themselves and each other, we experience coherence and joy. When they are out of tune, in disharmony and pulling in different directions, we experience dissonance and pain.

Meeting another person is like meeting another orchestra. All the possibilities for harmony and disharmony that we have within ourself are expanded by the larger number or relationships possible with this other. In a concert hall the interactions are mediated by sound waves. With human beings they are mediated by frequencies of emotional, mental, and spiritual energy.

Harmony is related to resonance, two things vibrating at the same frequency, or related harmonics. Beyond the musical advantages of harmony, resonance is important as the foundation of perception. The resonance of receptors in your eye to frequencies of light, of the fibers in your ears to the frequencies of sound and of the substance of your being to the frequencies of emotion, thought, or spirit.

Multiple frequencies that are mutually in tune, resonant or harmonic, can physically vibrate your organs of perception at the same time. Frequencies that are not in tune, will be trying to vibrate the organs of perception in incompatible ways. This causes physically or energetically painful dissonance. What we can resonate with, we can perceive and come to understand. Otherwise it is painful, or simply not perceived at all. Listening to another person, common experience is allows the resonance necessary to understand as well as to hear. A resonance of feeling like this may be called compassion.

Resonance also allows transfer of energy. When two things are in resonance energy moves easily between them. Entering an emotional resonance is the basis for transference and counter-transference, in which emotional and mental energies can flow back and forth. This can be useful when consciously managed (which is subtle) or potentially damaging. It is paradoxical that without certain levels of resonance we cannot understand (or even hear) another person, but with too much we become tangled in energy flows that obscure clarity of understanding and hinder healing on both sides.

Traditionally compassion is associated with emotional resonance. Spiritually, compassion involves awareness and understanding, and like mindfulness, also acceptance and appreciation. The ability to let things be what they are. Being present with another, witnessing them, creating a positive space of acceptance and appreciation for them, without condition. This kind of compassion is at the core of healing, because this space allows for transformation. The aspects that need to can unpack, complete, and release.

This presence is a spiritual/energetic presence of the soul. A soul holding a field of unconditioned regard. Within that field all sorts of things can happen, and will to the extent that the client is ready and willing. It is a space of safety and non-judgment. There is a certainty that the other is also a soul that is whole and perfect, although the personality may be working through some things. When one person can anchor this spiritual state of being into their body and let it radiate, the other soul will come into resonance with it and healing will take place.

At the soul/spirit level resonance can facilitate something more than transference and counter-transference. We can teach by talking about states of being. This is a pointer or signpost until the student has had that experience themselves. The power of working in the inner world (meditation/trance) is that one may experience spiritual states of being directly, returning with that experience to everyday life. The body/being has been to the new state, and this helps to return, to cultivate it.

The resonance of two spiritual beings also allows an even more direct method. If I can hold a positive state which you may be wanting to learn, your being will be aware and at the soul level can copy it. You may want to know how to ground and release old emotions from your space. I can talk your through the process. I can invite you into a meditation and lead you through the process. When we are in resonance, I can ground myself powerfully and your being (not your mind) can perceive and match. This is a direct experience without words or translation of any kind. We can communicate and learn soul to soul in a way that is simple and yet powerful, subtle, complex and deep.

(© 04/2017)

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Golden Children

Posted on March 6, 2017 by mcallister

Children on Stage

All the world’s a stage,
And all the men and women merely players;
They have their exits and their entrances…

Thoughts and emotions parade across the stage of our consciousness. If we can greet them and entertain them from the place of mindfulness their exit will soon enough follow after their entrance. However, they may in various ways overwhelm our capacity for neutrality. Becoming tangled in them we keep them on stage by attachment and/or resistance. In time we usually manage to move on to new scenes, but the old ones that have never finished are not gone, merely carried off back stage and stored away.

Some are buried deeply, others keep popping back out trying to get our attention, or reacting to newer scenes that are similar in some way. The psychic energy in the emotional charge for each wants to finish its play. The spect of our self associated with that charge is paused at that scene rather than moving forward as we grow and develop. This entangled aspect of self tends to have characteristics from the time it paused, so the important early ones are often child-like or childish.

Eventually we come back to these scenes to help them complete, either consciously or due to the power they contain. Often we describe this as working with our wounded inner children. They may be scared, grieving, carrying shame or guilt. Often they are hiding from us as much as from other people. When we can come to them with compassion, acceptance, and mindfulness they can complete their scenes, release their burdens, and reintegrate with us in present time.

In the processes that serve to heal our wounded children we may also discover other aspects. Children are often thought of as vulnerable and fragile. In some ways they are. They are at the same time also strong and resilient. An infant’s head survives stronger pressure in the birth canal than it can again at any time in life. While some inner children bear the wounding, other inner children carry our strongest aspects. They are our survival champions, powerful and resourceful, clever and angry, whatever it took.

Often there is a mix of the energy of the wounding with the energy of that aspect that helped us, however well or poorly, to survive and move on. Our champions having created any number of strategies for dealing with things that are challenging, may persist in beliefs and behaviors that become less useful and helpful over time. The initial emotional charge combined with layers that have accumulated over time, may be quite complex, even contradictory.

Because of this mixing of energies we must be ready to face the wounding in order to reclaim our power. As our more developed adult self, with resources of Self and Spirit, friends and family, we can return safely to the old scene, watching it from the balcony or reliving it on the stage, whatever serves best to let it complete. Pushing the old things away not only fails over the long run, but blocks us from the golden aspects that have been managing the shadow.

The wounded parts need to be healed, but the strong parts must also be recognized and valued. We may invite them to release their charges, to put down their burdens, but also welcome them to bring their strengths and gifts to help us in new ways in the present. This is the fairy tale gold in the midst of the mud, or at the bottom of the well.
Recognizing their strengths and their power and abilities, we can invite them to step into the present, to free themselves from the old scenes and to help us consciously creating new ones full of joy and light.

(© 3/2017)

Posted in Healing, Life Lessons, Newsletter, Psychology | Leave a comment

Riding Geodesics

Posted on February 4, 2017 by mcallister

by Alan McAllister, CCHt PhD-phys published in Shakti Yogi Journal

Central Galaxy

Not all that wander are lost
Not all that are paused are stuck

Lying propped up in a hospital bed, I focus through my closed eyelids and perceive a sphere of dots around me. They look something like the pile in a carpet, clear and in focus, about five feet away. I can inspect them in detail. If I look away they are still there when I scan back. I’ve experienced things like this before, especially in the circular temple I love. The presence of this sphere feels comforting as a protective bubble around me. Having just come out of an emergency operation for a ruptured appendix, protection is welcome. It defines a safe space that my awareness floats in while body focuses on healing itself.

Floating in interstellar space; the surrounding blackness is lit by millions of lights, the suns of the Milky Way. Only the stars provide a sense of space, direction, or orientation. There is no weight, no sense of motion. Though it can’t be felt there is motion but the stars are too far away to shown it. Flowing in the gravitational field of the galaxy; the sum effect of billions of stars, seen and unseen, curves space-time and defines a path. The path is called a geodesic, a curve in space that is a straight-line in space-time. The shortest distance between two points, similar to the great circle on routes that airplanes fly on Earth. The shortest route from Denver to Paris goes over Greenland not New York. Mass warps space-time and direct paths are no longer what we call straight. The warps in space-time cause things to move. We commonly call this gravity.

Letting go of the sphere; my attention focuses back into my body. There is not much pain now, though I have the sense that moving around isn’t a good idea. There are tubes in each arm and one in my side. I haven’t eaten in several days and my abdomen is full of many sensations from achey places, to gaseous gurglings. I mentally reset Reiki symbols in my hands and hold them gently over the closed incision above my right hip. Deeply aware of the physicality of my body, it’s easy to let go of the outside world, to let it take care of itself for a while. I am focused on doing what I can to help my body heal from the pain and infection of the last few days, and from the recent intrusion of the surgeon which has left an empty space in my belly. Focused on being gentle with it, so as not to disturb parts that could reopen or re-infect, I come back to the Rieki over and over.

Weight is not the sensation of the body reacting to gravity, but the result of the body pushing against something else. In space there is gravity, and motion, but there is no perception of weight until feet touch the surface of a planet or moon. A sky diver is weightless until she hits the ground. Moving through the stars, orbiting a planet, or free falling through the sky, a body is always in the gravitational field, following a path determined by that field. The past is a unique story, but in each moment the physics is the same. Only when something blocks the path, like the Earth below her feet, is weight felt, does gravity come into awareness. Only when there is resistance to free fall motion along a geodesic is there something other than relaxation.

Lying in bed I relax as much as possible into being supported. Supported by my bed. Supported by my beloved, who has been with me through the whole journey, and is now bringing me home-made bone broth and sleeping on the sofa bed. Supported by the multiple levels of hospital staff who are monitoring and caring for me. Supported by my guides and the Reiki life force. I have great gratitude for being so well supported. Letting go of everything else I focus on my Being and my healing.

Flowing with gravity out in space is easy. Standing on the earth flowing with gravity is still possible, but quite different. The pull of gravity must be allowed to pass through the body. This only happens with relaxation, learning how to eliminate all resistance from the body. This is sometimes called T’ai Chi, but you might imagine it as floating through space and simply bumping into an object with the feet. Feel the earth with them, let all the tension and resistance flow downwards, so the body is balanced, relaxed, and everything else is beneath the feet. Where they meet the ground there is weight, but not in the body unless there is tension and resistance. Standing under a water fall, or in the shower, feel the water slide over the body. Let the pull of gravity also slide down all the muscles and out the feet.

My life and path has been stopped for a while; unexpectedly, even though the appendicitis had been incubating for months. Flowing or stopped I am still able to focus on my core Self. I sense it as a central beam of light. I come back to this, and to the Reiki over and over. My mind which really has no constructive role to play right now, keeps spinning out anyway, trying to protect me, to plan or fix something, anything. I am more than usually aware of this and more than usually able to let it go and bring my attention back to center. I realize deeply that having a mantra, a core visual, or the sense of my own heart, is helpful in this practice of just being present with my Self. They all embody the intention to remember who I am.

Humans come from the Heavens and are grounded into the Earth. There is a universal flow of energy from Source to Ground in which each body/being is a pattern that exists on the surface of the planet. Learning to relax and open to gravity helps learning to relax and open to the flow of Life Force from Source to Ground. Gravity is the teacher in this. It will immediately point out where there is tension or resistance. Letting go of what the body holds, opens it to the flow of chi, to the presence of Life. The Being becomes spacious and free. Fully releasing physical tension requires releasing emotional/mental tension and holding. Open the heart and mind as well as the body. Opening to gravity, opening to life, release everything into the Earth, be grounded, rather than fighting with weight and the ground. Grounded, things pass through the body and we remain ourselves.

In my interior world I seem to have a different relationship with my thinking mind than usual. A thought arises, and then, as usual, this leads to another thought. Chains of thought can ramble all over the place if you let them. But lying here I notice that after a step or two, my mind suddenly provides a whole story, movie, or drama. Moving at incredible speed in thought and vision. I am in awe of what it can do, but I am also outside my mind a little more than usual. I am not caught up in the dream, but watching it with a separate sense of Self. Noticing this process it is easy to let it go, to call myself back to being my Self in my own space and sphere of inner awareness.

As I release the mind and the visuals, I think myself through being whole and healing. In three weeks my daughter will get married on the east coast. I need to be there. This is something that’s harder to let go of. Underneath the usual thought level, I also sense that my physical body is vibrating with a cellular alarm. Mental worries I can release, just breathe and take things as they come. Trust all my support. But my body has been through more than I’ve been conscious of and I can feel that. It is not ready to die. It is good to be honest with myself about what I can detach from and what I can’t.

Riding the geodesics of the galaxy, how does someone come to a planet, come down into embodiment? Until standing on the Earth a person is not present as a human being, is not grounded. But how to leave a geodesic in deep space and arrive here? There is no way, in between the stars, to set a new course for a star or for a planet, unless something is given up. Toss something away and a body will move off in the opposite direction. Action and reaction. Newton’s third law. This is how rockets, and airplanes work. So even before landing on Earth something must be released in order to change course to get here.

Earlier today I gave up a part of my physical body. how has my course changed. This evening perhaps there are other things to be released. I am grateful for the heightened awareness of all levels of my self. Only with awareness can I begin to let go. I now have an unusual opportunity to let go of the concepts and mental structures that make up my life. They have been stripped suddenly away and slowly they will be put back together. If I can stay present through the process I can choose what to pick up again, and what relationship I will have with what I do pick up. This is the hard part. The deep fear says to get through things fast. It wants to get to the place where I know I’m going to be OK; then I can relax. But the practice is to relax here and now. Most things won’t release until I can be present with them; to hold my pain, or anxiety with compassion, to let things move easily in my guts. It is a strange sort of T’ai Chi, but that is what it is. Relaxing so things can flow again after having been stopped.

Grounded on the Earth, there is contact with the Other; with the planet that pulls a body close and yet blocks the gravitational path to the attraction of its core. Earth supports us, and also gives us weight. Standing on the ground, relaxation is not as easy as it was out in space, in isolated free fall. To return to that relaxation, that clarity and open spaciousness, it must be found inside rather than outside. Interaction shows what must be given up, those things that are not essential, that are internalized Other; the things that are resisted or held onto, the things that create tension and prevent gravity from flowing effortlessly through the body into the ground. Render unto Caesar those things that are not ours, or that we are finished with.

Of the things I am holding onto, some leave easily and others I’m apparently still attached to. I realize that under these things there is always a part of me that does the holding. It is most important to be aware of are these parts that feel sacred, sad, angry or not enough. They will find new things to hold until I acknowledge them, bring compassion to them and release or re-task them as well. This deeper level of letting go and healing is easy to skip over in my eagerness to get through this space of physical uncertainty. Pausing, I come back to being held, and explore the inner aspects of self that are frantic and scared. My inner vision conjures up a new inner safe place, in a Japanese teahouse overlooking a large garden. I can close my eyes and come there to sit, meditate, and be still. I find there also an inner boy frantically racing through the garden. He is terrified. Over the course of a day or so he slowly calms down until eventually I check in and find him sleeping.

Involved in struggle with the Other, attention becomes focused externally. Distracted, it becomes lost in what is being engaged and needs to be released. Contact teaches, but only if attention stays at least partially internal. Conscious engagement shows where there is primarily struggle with the self, where things are internally muddy and confused. Allowing gravity to point these places out they can be resolved and released. Once the self is open and clear inside, there follows the awareness of the Light of Being and it is possible to feel the Love that flows from Source. There is no more need of struggle, of being tired, of having achey feet. Whole and clear, the Self can reach out to the planet, to family and friends, to the beloved in human form, and meet them without conflict, simply and harmoniously. Everything flows through and nothing is held back.

Being on a light diet of soup and juice I am empty. Gases move through naturally and are released. Slowly fear and tension, pain and discomfort ease and dissipate. My mind has been releasing old pictures furiously, but it finally begins to calm. I know that I am loved and nurtured by those around me. There is an inner spaciousness that results from even a violent clearing such as this. Into this space, which I presently so aware of, comes the flow of Life Force, the healing of Reiki, the Love of my beloved. Experiencing this clearly, I relax into and rest with my Self.

We are sailing through the galaxy again, relaxed, at ease, surrounded by billions of stars. And we are on a planet being human, equally at ease and at peace.

Days pass, and I go home. Slowly I am eating more, becoming more physical again. I can still feel the inner flow energy and love more clearly than before. I set a personal intention to keep some of the deeper awareness of my body, of my mind and spirit that has been given to me for a while.

This will be part of my yoga, not just being more aware of spirit and energy but also my body. I realize how easily my mind tries to override and rule my body, to have an agenda for physicality, a plan, or pattern without checking in with the body that actually carries it out. I want to allow my body to have more say in how and when I eat, digest, eliminate. The amazing inner world of my body has been through a great imbalance and clearing and I need to remember this, to keep greater balance in my overall awareness.

Listening to gravity as an ongoing practice, the body will tell you when energy is stuck and being held rather than being in flow. Listening to gravity gives awareness of Spirit and Life Force and teaches how to ride all the geodesics.

My body is how I feel emotions and energy, love and joy. I need to be aware of it in order to let it care for itself, but that same awareness also gives me have all these other blessings too. When I need to I take myself back to the hospital bed and recall that place of being in my space, of floating in space. I can feel this deeply whenever I need to center and ground.

References

Hawking, S.W., A Brief History of Time, Bantum, 1988.

Misner, C.W., Thorne, K., and Wheeler, J.A. Gravitation. W H Freeman, 1973.

How to take advantage when your world pauses.

When a life situation pauses your usual world, or you have found a place and time where it’s easy to let go, allow your being to make use of it, rather than rushing back to re-creating the usual and normal. That will come on it’s own.

Activate..

– Letting go of the pieces of your life, floating in the void.
Sometimes life puts you in a situation where the outer world is deconstructed in some way. It may be abrupt, but it an also be gentle, like a hike in the mountains. It is always an opportunity to pause and notice what is left inside you when part or all of the outer world goes away.

– Focusing and centering on Self, body and Soul.
In your practices, or in special circumstances, cultivate inner focus and awareness. Develop an inner anchor that represents your core sense of Self. Mantra, inner visual, or a feeling in your heart, it will help guide you home whenever you need to center.

– Open to awareness of the body as a sensory experience.
The body is full of awareness. It is a great antenna for all the levels and aspects of being. Cultivating awareness of the body gives access to all the information they contain.

– Relaxing the body.
In any situation notice where you are tense or resisting something. Use awareness to help you relax. This will improve the ease and efficiency of whatever you are doing.

– Separating from personal aspects and let them relax or release.
Inner sensations of all sorts usually have emotions and often stories attached to them. Focusing on the physical, frees all levels to complete and release. It is especially important to let go of judgmental components.

– Notice the spaciousness and welcome the energies of Life and Love.
When the body has relaxed, when the being has relaxed, there is spaciousness which naturally fills with Life Force and Love. They allow you to recognize and connect directly to the sources of your Being.

– Gently re-engage the outer world without losing your inner awareness.
Once you have centered and connected to your power, you can re-engage with the outer world on your own terms. Being full of Love that flows endlessly into your heart let it overflow out into the world.

Simple Above-Below Meditation: Finding a comfortable position. Give yourself a breath. Center in your Being and release the outer world. Connect to Source, feeling Love in your heart. Let it naturally fill your body/being. Watch it continue to expand. Be certain that you are allowing Source energy to flow through you, be relaxed, without effort. It fills the room, the building, the local area, the state. Watch it expand around the world, noticing other love fields from your brothers and sisters. Like gravity it will continue to radiate outwards to fill the solar system and the galaxy.

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