Unfortunately, the message we get while growing up tells us as that we must choose. If you are male you must only adopt and perfect ‘Yangness’: “Go out there and show the world what you’re made of”; “strut your stuff”, “divide and conquer!” Girls are taught that there domain is to be passive, receptive, and nurturing. And never the twain shall meet! And so we grow up spilt off from our inherent wholeness and diminished as fully creative human beings. By embracing our innate capacity for both ‘yin-ness’ and ‘yang-ness’, irrespective of gender, and balancing  them in the heart, we create a marriage of spirit. For men we awaken to the ‘Sacred Masculine’ and open to our fullest potential.

If you are a man and would like to explore the ‘Sacred Masculine’ in you I invite you to join me in a seminar on June 18 in San Francisco. This is a courageous step into a new level of your spiritual Self. If you feel ready, please join me. You’ll see a flyer with all of the information linked below. It would be great to see you there!

Awakening the Sacred Masculine

Is there anything we can do?

My teacher has taught me a simple yet powerful technique to integrate the ups and downs of our egoic mental and emotional states. Based on the ancient mystical teachings of the ‘unification of opposites’ and using the truth and power of the ‘middle way’, this technique quickly and easily brings balance and equanimity to the day to day dramas of our lives. Using it over time the pendulum swing of our emotions is lessened and we begin spending more and more time between the extremes of opposites. The place of the ‘middle way’ is a powerful place to be because we are our outside of the attraction and repulsion of our emotions. It introduces us to new states of being that are balanced and expansive; they are states of the heart. We call these the Ascended Balance States. Here are a few – feel into them and notice what they invoke in you: compassion; equanimity; faith; forgiveness; gratitude; harmony humility; patience; quiessence; selflessness; tolerance; trust, unconditional love

It is out of this quality of love that all of the balanced states of being arise.

If you would like to find out more about Polarity Processing, Leslie Temple-Thurston explains this technique and other powerful techniques for clearing the personality in her beautiful book The Marriage of Spirit. You’ll find a link in my Blogroll at the left. And if you would like to learn the technique in person with experiential practice, please come to the workshop I will be co-facilitating with my dear friend and teacher, Charu Rachlis on Sunday, May 15 in San Francisco. This event will be a benefit for the humanitarian organization Seeds of Light. Look for the details in the Events link at the top of the blog. Hope to see you there!

The Blyde River Canyon area of South Africa lies on a North South axis roughly parallel to the Nilotic Meridian – a powerful ley line or energy current that connects to the Great Pyramid of Giza. A special treat and great privilege was my visit with the White Lions of Timbavati which sits along this meridian. The White Lions are considered by the African tribal elders to be the most sacred animal of Africa. Their presence on the Nilotic meridian helps hold the galactic heart for the world, flowing it through the meridian and into the world. I was a guest of Linda Tucker and her husband, lion ecologist Jason Turner, on their protected land called Tsau! The White Lions had been kept in captivity and hunted as trophies, so Linda founded the Global White Lion Protection Trust to ensure their protection and to preserve the indigenous African culture which holds them sacred. How all this came about is a fascinating story which she shares in her powerful book Mystery of the White Lions. I recommend it!

The Divine speaks to us in surprising and lovely ways, which is how I came to meet a gorgeous African bird. I was sitting on the porch of my rondavel one morning meditating to the sounds of the bush when, upon hearing a flutter of feathers, my eyes popped open. A beautiful ‘parrot’ alighted on a branch in front of me not ten feet away. He was lovely, about 12 inches (30 cm.) long, with iridescent green head and neck, yellow bill, scarlet breast, and long grey tail feathers. He wanted to be with me (and I with him!), so we sat in silence for a few minutes. I was careful not to stare and diverted my eyes while holding him in my visual field. I asked if he had a message for me and told him how beautiful he was! I felt blessed by his presence and amazed that he chose to stay so long, probably about three full minutes! Then he was off, landing on another branch to my side, barely visible, his colors cloaked in the thick bush. 

Later, I learned his name – Narina Trogon – and what a rare sighting he is. This bird is common on the eastern coast of Africa, but is notorious for being difficult to spot, since he most often perches with his green back to the observer. Our direct meeting felt all the more special and Divine.  I also learned he was not a parrot at all, but belongs to a family called Lovebirds. According to Jane Toerien & Joyce van Dobben in their Ascension to Paradise Bird Card Set, “Trogon energy is able to hold the frequency expressed by the Divine Self, free from the constraints of the ego. True freedom lies in knowing beyond any doubt that we are already free and always have been.”

In Cape Town on March 19 , an auspicious day when the full moon was Perigee (closest to our earth), I was invited by a friend to meet with a group led by Dean Liprini at a sacred site on the lower slopes of Little Lion’s Head above Hout Bay. This was to be one of the most powerful positions to view the sun setting over the Atlantic Ocean to the west while the full moon rose through the sacred gateway of Constantia Neck.

In sacred ceremony we welcomed the Divine Masculine energy of the setting sun in Pisces and the Divine Feminine energy of the rising moon in Virgo as we became a human fulcrum for the two in this rare cosmic event and balance of yin and yang. Was it this auspicious astrological occurrence which triggered the recent Internet activity of  ‘spiritual men’ calling on all men to honor the beauty and power of the feminine principle in the world and in themselves?

More on this in a future blog entry…

Image by ~Aphrodite via Flickr

What’s so wonderful about the Christmas season, despite the commercialism, is that our hearts open. During the ‘season of giving’, our generosity opens our hearts. There is a palpable shift in our individual energy and in the energy of the collective field. We more easily feel our connection to others – we feel the love.

A couple of students I’m working with have been grappling with money issues lately. What I’ve learned about money is paradoxical: instead of contracting and withholding when money is tight, do just the opposite – give. We can have the spirit and loving energy of Christmas year-round through the simple act of giving. When we give of our resources, whether it is our money, or our talents and expertise, or if we simply reach out in some way to someone in need, our hearts open. Beautiful and uplifting in itself, but in the open heart we actually open to a flow of abundance from the Universe that waits patiently to come back to us. And if we give selflessly, with no thought of reward, the power of love behind this gesture amplifies its potency. It’s a win-win!

Selfless giving is statement of belief to the Universe that we trust that we are always supported, which is true. It is only our belief that there is not enough to go around that blocks a flow of abundance into our lives. We create our own reality. If we believe in lack, lack is what will manifest. If we trust in the infinite supply that comes from the Divine, then through our generosity we will manifest a flow of abundance that will support and sustain us.

Sri Aurobindo, the great 20th century mystic, speaks eloquently about money in his book, The Mother:

“Regard wealth simply as a power to be won back for the Mother and placed at her service. All wealth belongs to the Divine and those who hold it as trustees, not possessors. It is with them today, tomorrow it may be elsewhere. All depends on the way they discharge their trust while it is with them, in what spirit, with what consciousness in their use of it, to what purpose.

In your personal use of money look on all you have or get or bring as the Mother’s. Make no demand but accept what you receive from her and use it for the purposes for which it is given to you. Be entirely selfless, entirely scrupulous, exact, careful in detail, a good trustee; always consider that it is her possessions and not your own that you are handling. On the other hand, what you receive for her, lay religiously before her; turn nothing to your own or anybody else’s purpose.”

May you open to a flow of love and abundance in your life in 2011. It is yours for the asking through selfless giving.

Here is my response:

The inner critic that haunts you at work is an internalized parental authority figure. And this ghostly persona is tapping into a program of ‘worthlessness’ that was instituted over time throughout your childhood years.

Before we came into this world we were connected to Source, to our essential nature as spiritual beings. Suddenly, from the warm, nurturing environment of mother’s womb we are thrust into this world – what a shock! The experience immediately registers as a loss and a separation from our divine nature. From the Oneness of the ‘all that is’ we are born into a world of opposites and duality. In fact, it is on our journey through the birth canal that we are imprinted with all of the negative and positive frequencies that comprise the mental and emotional states required to fully experience life seemingly divided in two. And down near the bottom of the dark void of negative states, lurking in the unconscious, lies ‘worthlessness’. After all, we were cast out of heaven – we must have done something wrong! In truth, none of it is real – our connection to the Oneness of the divine is never lost. Duality is a perception, an illusion, and part of the maya of existence which our souls chose to experience.

This ‘worthlessness’ becomes a program that can be triggered as we begin to make it real. First, our parents begin to shape our sense of self-worth by rewarding us in some way, with affirming words (or candy, or a toy, perhaps) when we please them, or punishing us with disapproving words (or actions) when we let them down. And if your parents were particularly harsh, critical, and judging when you were growing up, then you will have a heavier parental overlay of this ‘worthlessness’ program. By the time we are adults we will have had countless visits with worthlessness, a state which is so dense and uncomfortable, it gets pushed into the unconscious. And there in the unconscious it remains, unseen and unfelt. We hope it will just go away, but like the proverbial bogey men, it waits hidden in the closet of our minds, waiting to be activated by the slightest intimation.

The program becomes further imprinted when the critical authority figure that is our parents then becomes our teachers in school! When we finally we arrive into adulthood we have completely internalized our external authority figures. We don’t need anyone to criticize and judge us and tell us we are not good enough – we do it to ourselves!

But there is a way out of this apparent trap in consciousness. There is a way to revisit and clear the childhood experiences where the trauma of worthlessness (and other traumas) were first programmed. The work is called “Liberating Frozen Children”. If you like we can plan a session and I’ll guide you through this simple and accessible, but profound work. When you rediscover your divine connection beyond the illusion of worthlessness, you will remember that as a child of God you were always cherished and loved, and perfect just the way you are!

Image by Isabela.C via Flickr

“I am looking at my patterning around ‘subservient woman’ and losing my power, playing small etc., as opposed to my fear of the powerful male…. It is as if the egoic patterning brings confusion to what is real, especially around male and female balance. I don’t even know what a balanced male and female is… I would like some clarity around this as it feels like it is holding me back.”

Here is my reply and a bit more:

The polarity of Dominance and Subservience you describe is huge in this world. In fact, ‘power over’ has been business as usual for the last 5,000 years! Polarities held in the mind and emotions are imbalances, and they are an inseparable pair. They are part of the dual nature of this world, and we can’t have one without the other. When we identify with one side, in your case, the subservient woman, the dominant side is still present but it lies unseen in the unconscious mind. What resides in the unconscious is projected out and will be mirrored to us by someone who will act out that unowned energy for us. Men as dominating authority figures show up in your life because you have denied that this energy exists in you.

Each of us, irrespective of gender, has access to both yang/male and yin/female energies. The male energy is action oriented and outwardly directed, but in its distorted form as it passes through the uncleared ego can out-picture as a dominating or controlling energy. The female energy is passive, inward and receptive, and in its extreme can become timid and submissive. On the journey to our wholeness we must acknowledge and honor the inherent and sacred power of both our masculine and feminine sides and bring them into balance.

A little self-inquiry is required here. Begin by asking yourself, “How do I do this dominating energy sometimes too? Where am I in a position of authority where I might sometimes abuse my power by wielding it in a dominating or over-powering way. With my kids? With my dog or cat? With my employees?” Can’t seem to find it? How about when you swat and kill that fly that just won’t stop bothering you? It’s the same energy! The integration and healing comes by uncovering all the ways (some of them may be very subtle) you use this dominating behavior and owning them. As you choose to to let them go, you naturally allow space for the healing, receptive and compassionate energy of the feminine to flow through and to guide your actions.

When we are functioning from a balanced male and female energy, the out-going male energy is tempered by the receptive female energy, and the power to affect positive change in any situation arises out of this balance. For your immediate situation, your relationships will begin to change and men who are more balanced and who are not dominating and controlling will show up for you. And wouldn’t that be a welcome change?

And wouldn’t this be a wonderful world!

I shared that there is an important distinction to be drawn between meditating into the silence by intentionally quieting the mind, and meditating “on” a problem seeking a resolution, which more accurately could be called contemplation. The best approach is to allow space for both, as they both have value, but to maintain them as distinct activities. Quieting the mind in silent meditation is the more powerful use of your time, as the Unified Field of Pure Awareness that we connect with can provide us with the answers we seek spontaneously – in or out of meditation. Universal Intelligence knows exactly how to “speak” to us to provide us with the answers we seek.

In the receptivity of the quiet meditative state we are available for this communication. It may come in the form of an intuitive ‘hit’ or inner knowing, or a clairaudient message, or perhaps through a visual image in our mind’s eye.

Another student in the group shared her experience of this while on a ten day meditation retreat. She had been feeling troubled about an overall feeling of unhappiness in her life, without having any sense of where it was coming from. During a silent meditation she had the vision of a butterfly emerging out of a cocoon. Instantly, she realized the source of her unhappiness – that she felt stifled in her marriage and needed to break free. As a result, she has and moved on and grown and her life has changed completely. Such is the power of quieting the mind.

Meditating with the goal of quieting the mind, or stopping thought, has profound benefits for us on many levels. Meditation reduces stress and allows our nervous system to settle. In meditation our respiratory rate decreases, our heart rate slows and blood pressure decreases. We gently move into a profound state of relaxed alertness where a deep reorganization and healing of mind, body, and emotions can take place. We begin to experience life from a calmer more centered place, recognizing this place as our true nature as Pure Awareness.

When I first learned to meditate years ago, my teacher told me a story about how in ancient India, cloth was dyed and made to be colorfast. After dipping the cloth in the dye it was hung in the sun to dry. The first time the sun bleached out the color entirely. After a second bath in the dye and a drying in the sun, most of the color bleached out, but this time a faint hue remained. Each time the process was repeated a little more color remained in the fabric, until finally the cloth became so saturated with color that the sun’s bleaching action no longer affected it. It became colorfast. Similarly, when we meditate, we carry the benefits of entering the Silence out into the world. The stress of our daily lives wears away the effects of our meditation initially, but over time, we take a little bit more of that quiet Presence with us into our worldly activities. Just as the dye merges with the cloth after repeated exposure, we merge with the truth of our nature as Presence when we continue to spend time there in meditation. Our identity shifts from that of the personality to this Pure Awareness, where we remain untouched by the stressful effects of the day and all of the frequencies of existence may pass through us. We become open and inspired individuals and our creativity flourishes.

If you’d like to learn to meditate, it is not difficult. It does help to have one-on-one instruction to get started and to have some follow-up support for questions that inevitably arise. Please click the ‘Meditation’ page at the top of the blog for more information and ways to contact me.

“Staff meetings at work have been tense lately with management pitted against employees around just compensation. I always have something to say, especially when my buttons get pushed, but I feel no one listens to me and I feel dismissed – I’m afraid they see me as weak and ineffectual. Then, later, I feel frustrated because I realize I didn’t say what I really wanted to say. What’s going on here? How can I change people’s perception of me?”

Here is how I responded:

The real power of our words comes from a place of neutrality and our commitment to speaking absolute truth. From this place there is no agenda and no investment in making someone right or wrong, or good or bad. This kind of egoic positioning actually blocks access to our intuition and higher intelligence and to our highest expression.

In a hierarchical set-up like at your workplace there is no level playing field. Those at the top may give you a voice, but they do not see you as an equal. And as you are seeing, when you come from an egoic, reactive place and they sense that you are making them wrong or attacking them in some way, they throw up a wall by tuning you out, behaving dismissively towards you, or cutting you off completely. But if you can speak from a neutral place with no agenda other than to speak your truth, the words will come and your colleagues will take notice. By doing this you are actually holding an alignment in your core, which is a direct conduit to Source and your Higher Self. It is speaking from your heart. Others may not agree with what you are saying, but your words will heard and felt because they will ring with the power of your personal truth and authenticity.

This neutral state is actually centered outside of the push/pull of our desires and fears. It holds the position between the negative and positive spin of our egoic patterning . It is higher consciousness. In fact, the more we practice living our lives from this neutral witnessing place in the face of perceived adversity, the more we will build our light and connection to Source.

So in a heated staff meeting at work, your neutral witness would watch the drama unfold while your higher mind holds the intention of being neither attracted or repulsed. You would tune in to your emotional body throughout the conversation and allow your emotions to move through, maintaining your center by holding your witness all the while. The breath can be your lifeline here, especially if anger comes up. When we feel threatened in some way, the hormone adrenaline is released by the adrenal glands and our nervous system becomes activated. It is our primitive “fight or flight” response to impending danger and it can quickly knock us off center. Use the power of your breath to hold the witness. Consciously breathe. Taking slow, deep belly breaths in through the nose and releasing out though the mouth will gradually tame the adrenals and allow you to maintain neutrality.

…. you are above the fray, holding your neutral witness and emotional center and when it is your opportunity to speak, your connection to your Higher Self and intuitive voice gives you access to the words you seek. Emotional triggers are usually unconscious, so it may take some practice familiarizing yourself with the neutral witness position in order to override the trigger. But be forgiving of yourself and keep trying! – your witness will strengthen over time. You will not only begin to change other’s perception of you, you will grow your consciousness by identifying more and more with your true nature between the spin of opposites, which is Divinity itself.

Taking time for meditation each day is in no small way making a bid for spiritual power. In meditation we prepare to meet the Divine, accessing our conscious awareness, and our lives change in profound ways. At the very least, we ride the inevitable waves of change with more ease, grace, and equanimity. If we also incorporate a process of self-inquiry with the intention of processing and clearing our limited personality patterns, we find ourselves accessing greater and greater levels of transcendental light. We grow and change, moving steadily towards Absolute Truth and the experience of what is real beyond the personality.

There are many beautiful writings by sages and mystics who, across time, have written about the benefits of quieting the mind. The Lake of Beauty is a favorite poem of mine by a more contemporary mystic – Edward Carpenter. Can you feel the power of this poem as it calls you home to the truth of your nature – to Self?

The Lake of Beauty

Let your mind be quiet, realizing the beauty of the world,

and the immense, the boundless treasures that it holds in store.

All that you have within you, all that your heart desires,

all that your Nature so specially fits you for — that or the

counterpart of it waits embeded in the great Whole, for you.

It will surely come to you.

————————————-

Yet equally surely not one moment before its appointed time

will it come. All your crying and fever and reaching out of

hands will make no difference.

Therefore do not begin that game at all.

Do not recklessly spill the waters of your mind

in this direction and in that,

lest you become like a spring lost and

dissipated in the desert.

————————————-

When you feel anger rising in you it is best not to act from this anger. But, do pay attention to it as a vibratory field of energy. Some people are in the habit of suppressing anger and it gets tamped down into the cells of the body adding to a reservoir of suppressed anger that is dormant, but toxic. Eventually, it will get triggered by some external event and burst forth in an emotional explosion that will drain you and leave you feeling bad.

So, we witness that anger is present, and without engaging it with our minds, we simply allow it to be. Consciously we detach from any thoughts our mind wants to generate about it – that we have been wronged in some way – that we don’t deserve to be treated this way – that we will get our revenge etc. Any story we begin to tell about our anger only serves to justify the anger in our minds, which allows the anger to build. Then it become us. Then we become identified with the anger and it overtakes us, causing us to become reactive and say or do something that we will later regret. Anger, like any emotion, is just a frequency or vibration of energy in motion, and we have the power to allow it to pass through our awareness field. We bring the power of our Presence to bear witness to this wave of energy passing through, and we ride it out. In this way it will leave harmlessly.

In a situation with someone when your buttons get pushed and you feel anger come up, before you begin to identify with it, take some deep breathes and just allow the anger to be. Be completely present with it while detaching from your thoughts. Give yourself permission to excuse yourself from the situation momentarily if necessary. Then, when the anger has dissipated though the power of your witnessing presence, you can collect your thoughts and have your say from a more grounded and non-reactive place.

For a person with a reservoir of stored anger it is beneficial to release it in a therapeutic way. One exercise that does this very effectively without attracting a lot of negative attention (like screaming at the top of your lungs!) comes from Polarity Yoga developed by Dr. Randolph Stone, the creator of Polarity Therapy. Called the ‘Woodchopper’, it ignites the fire principle in the body, facilitating the venting of stored anger out of the cells. It is important not to create an object for your suppressed anger, but rather to maintain your neutral witnessing presence while doing this exercise. An explanation of how to do the Woodchopper is at the end of this post.

Remember, we are Pure Awareness. When you can allow the frequencies of existence, whether positive or negative, to pass through you, without pulling them towards you or pushing them away, you are free. Then you are completely available to enjoy the wonder and diversity of life, and, as my teacher says, “all that heavenly glory”.

Woodchopper

Note: The Woodchopper should not be attempted if you have back problems.

Stand with your feet shoulder width apart, keeping your knees soft. Clasp your hands above your head. Take a deep breath in through your nose arching your body backwards, and on your exhale, bring your hands down between your legs, hinging from the hips and dropping your head as if chopping wood. Let out a loud explosive “Ha” sound at the end of the stroke. Inhale and come up slowly and repeat as many times as necessary until the anger has cleared. The movement should be rhythmic and flowing. You may need to take a break and repeat the process before you feel complete. Please follow your own guidance on this and be careful not to strain or go too fast, as this can lead to dizziness.