Friday, August 31, 2012

Spinning the Great Mandala


"Take your place on the Great Mandala
As it moves through your brief moment of time
Win or lose now you must choose now
And if you lose you’ve only wasted your life."

                                         Peter, Paul and Mary

 
One of the biggest tricks that life plays on us is having us experience being young before experiencing being old.  Especially in our current society of ever-increasing value on youthfulness, we grow up with intense programming to loathe "old people."  The focus is on old age frailties and infirmities. Elders are portrayed on TV and in other media as inept. 

We realized that we've been "tricked" when the years go by, we find ourselves "old."  At first, you experience shock and you wonder "what the hell has happened to me?"  After a few years you realize that you aren't the first person to grow old.  Your parents experienced the exact same thing before you, and their parents before them, and their parent before them.  You find a little bit of consolation in thinking that the younger people of today will experience it also, and their children after them, etc.

In intellectual terms, maturity comes from accepting your age, loving yourself and making the decision to do the best with the "time you have left."  By doing these things, you find freedom from self-loathing.

However, there is even greater freedom in realizing and knowing that you are not just your body, but you are a spirit with a body.  This lifetime is just one of the many you have had and will have.  You have seniority over the body.  This means that the body is yours to own.  You can come into your body and own the reality you have created thus far.  If you have been unconscious and just followed the programming to become decrepit, it is still not too late to own your body, love it and do some healing work. 

There are a few spiritual lessons we can learn from aging. You can become aware of your genetic agreements that you made with your family about aging, and release your karma with them.  You can accept that "growing old" is part of the human experience. You can become more aware of how the limitations you experience in your "old age" are reflections of your beliefs, attitudes and programming.  You can realize that every moment of experiencing human life (in whatever form it takes) is precious. This is why we get to do it again and again. We get to learn from our "mistakes!" 

Best of all, and at the very least, you can decide to bring even more of your spiritual awareness into your body next lifetime.  You can get a good head start on enjoying and mastering your life as a human being.  See you next time around!
 
Madeline

Sunday, August 19, 2012

Entropy and Your Inner Space


When your house is a mess, it's difficult to focus and get anything done.  You trip over somebody's shoes, can't find the stuff that you need, and are distracted by old snail-mail cluttering the table top. Do you ever wonder why it is that your house gets messy so often, and so easily? Every time you turn around there piles of papers to sort, bathtubs to scrub and dust-bunnies  in the corners that need sweeping. It isn't the result of anything that you do deliberately to mess the place up. It just happens, no effort!  This is due to the second law of thermodynamics: Everything in the universe moves from order to disorder.

This phenomenon also happens in your personal space and your aura. Layers of other people's demands and expectations, words and feelings from conversations that you had earlier that day, residues of emotional crises that you have experienced, and bits and pieces of other people's energy that cling to your space, even if all you did was pass them in the street and they reminded you of someone you know. All this debris in your aura makes it hard for you to get in your body and focus.

To move back from the chaos to order, you have to put energy into the system. For your house, it's the energy required to get off your butt and get out the vacuum. For your personal space, there are two very effective ways of cleaning out: exercise and meditation. Exercise goes a long way for cleaning out your physical space. Jumping into a cold pool clears everyone out of you head instantly.  But exercise alone doesn't affect the all of the subtle energies of your space. It doesn't reach into your inner space where your spiritual abilities are found and where you can communicate with yourself. 

To clean out your inner space, you apply energy by meditation.  The meditation that I do is called running energy.  You visualize or feel that you are directing the flow of your energy through your energy channels and centers in a particular pattern. Running energy moves out energy blocks and then you can release the unwanted energy out of your space.  This creates the space for you to be there, in your own body, heal yourself and focus your attention on the things that are important to you.

Just like having to do the laundry and the vacuuming at least once a week, you have to exercise and meditate on a regular basis too. I recommend doing it every day, especially if you would like to maintain your sanity and health. You have a very busy, active life.  Everyday you suffer the energetic slings and arrows of interacting with others (surely you throw a few of those yourself!). This is all normal and good. But at the end of the day, it's a good idea to release everything that isn't yours' and to gather up all of your energy and replenish yourself.

Having your personal space in good-working order, and replenishing your energy is a tremendous healing.  That's when you'll be have clarity about who you are and what you need to do.  And guess what?  You'll feel motivated to easily and quickly clean up the house so that it reflects your inner space. As above, so below!