Why aren’t all of us powerfully manifesting our lives in accordance with our truest hearts’ desires? You must have heard the phrase “I gave my power away”. We all gave our power away. And those in the universe who’s “job” it is to suck up that denied power are doing a fine job of it too. And they use that power “against” us because we, at some early point many eons ago, judged against power as being wrong to have and use, unloving in fact. The judgment has since reflected to us from ‘out there’ as…yup, power unlovingly used. In our judgmental selves we’d rather be right than happy. Judgments against our own inherent power – power to draw desired realities toward ourselves, power to keep ourselves safe, etc – hold that power at bay from reaching its potential in us.

Speaking of power, consensus judgments have incredible power. When something is accepted as “reality” by a majority of people in the world, that reality is exponentially empowered to remain manifest. As individuals, all we can do when facing classic consensus judgments in ourselves is release them and feel the feelings of hopelessness and whatever else arises while attempting judgment release. Sometimes what feels like truths are really judgments in disguise, repeated and believed by so many that they take on the appearance of truth. “I have no power as an individual to change things” is one example of such a judgment.

True loving power doesn’t overpower anybody or anything to meet its agenda. The power to stand firm in one’s right role and place, saying yes or no with conviction is the first step on a long road back to recovering our trust for our deeper powers of manifestation and magic.

The following poem speaks to what has happened to this power, and hints at how we might get it back.

The Dark Before Dawn

Little boy blue has shit on his shoe

And doesn’t want to notice

He say, “it’s you who stink

And if you think

We’re letting you empower

Well, we’ll never cower

From a war in which we’ll win

We are the masters of spin

And this great country of ours

Despite the din from the great unheard

Herd, will not go idly

Into that good night.

Nope, not us…we’ll fight fight fight

Because of course, we’re right

And right wins wars, and evens scores

And more.

We say, you scurvy whore

Battle me, and you will see

Who still steals the flower of power

From the weak and undeserving.”

Fie upon that! I’ll spit in my hat

‘fore I’ll go back to being

as before, when I blamed you

as the causal bore and believed it.

Yes, that’s right, I bought that bullshit

Cuz I barely knew better.

Now it’s down to me & mine

Who are doing time

In our sheds and caves

Riding the waves

Of our emotions and devotions

To She who will save us.

So if you feel it,

make a fuss, you gloomy gus,

Guilt ridden and gone from sight

Give up going past your plight

And let’s live for today

Though it’s not all play.

The row we hoe is uneven and dark

And we are frightened

And our hearts

Have tightened

Somewhat.

It’s the dark before dawn

So quit playing the pawn

And leave their game cuz it’s

Only the same tame shame

Join us on the edge

Make your inner pledge

To piss or poop so to please the pot

Before they come and throw you off

And you scream, “why me?

The world’s gone crazy, and

I didn’t know.”

Yes you did

But you ran and hid

God help me

Let’s take responsibility

For being free

The following meditation is excellent for stilling the mind and building chi. It can be read aloud or taped and replayed. Speak slowly, leaving space for deep breathing.

1. I breathe loving light into the center of my heart, allowing loving light to open into and expand my heart chakra.

2. I breathe loving light into the center of my heart, allowing loving light to expand, encompassing my throat chakra and solar plexus chakra, in one unified field of loving light within, through, and around my body. I allow my physical body to relax.

3. I breathe loving light into the center of my heart, allowing loving light to expand, encompassing my 3^rd eye chakra and navel chakra in one unified field of loving light within, through, and around my body. I allow my physical body to open.

4. I breathe loving light into the center of my heart, allowing loving light to expand, encompassing my crown chakra and root chakra in one unified field of loving light within, through, and around my body. I allow my physical body to let go and open further.

5. I breathe loving light into the center of my heart, allowing loving light to expand, encompassing my alpha chakra just above my head and omega chakra just below my spine in one unified field of loving light within, through, and around my body. I allow a wave of (grace or abundance or whatever is needed) to resonate between them.

6. I breathe loving light into the center of my heart, allowing loving light to expand, encompassing my 10th chakra above my head, and upper legs, in one unified field of loving light within, through, and around my body. I allow my emotional and physical bodies to merge.

7. I breathe loving light into the center of my heart, allowing loving light to expand, encompassing my 11th chakra above my head, and lower calves, in one unified field of loving light within, through, and around my body. I allow my mental, emotional and physical bodies to merge.

8. I breathe loving light into the center of my heart, allowing loving light to expand, encompassing my 12th chakra above my head, and below my feet, in one unified field of loving light within, through and around my body. I allow my spiritual/astral, mental, emotional and physical bodies to merge, creating the unified field. I allow loving light to amplify and fill my unified field to the degree my being can safely receive it.

9. I breathe loving light into the center of my heart, allowing loving light to expand, encompassing my 13th chakra above my head, and Earth’s crust, in one unified field of loving light within, through, and around my body. I allow my Oversoul and Earthbodies to merge with my unified field.

10. I breathe loving light into the center of my heart, allowing loving light to expand, encompassing my 14th chakra above my head, and Earth’s mantle, in one unified field of loving light within, through, and around my body. I allow the I AM Oversoul and all of my lost selves to merge with my unified field.

11. I breathe in loving light into the center of my heart, allowing loving light to expand, encompassing my 15^th chakra above my head, and Earth’s core, in one unified field of loving light within, through, and around my body. I allow the MotherFather Source energies to meet and merge in the center of my heart, in my body.I AM a bridge between Heaven and Earth.

Many of us are familiar with the character Treebeard from Tolkien’s “Lord Of The Rings”, and the comical ways in which he moved and acted more slowly than any of the other characters (who weren’t Ents, of course). We could say that nobody in a human body would ever want to take as long as Treebeard did to do things, but I find Treebeard to be a great teacher. When I am moving slowly and unhurriedly, my breathing deepens, my thoughts drop out and I am significantly more in touch with my body and my feelings. It’s remembering and practicing the art of slowness that is the tricky piece to master.

Those of us living in remote locales figure we’ve slowed down the pace of our lives merely by living where we do, having “dropped out of the race”. To some extent this is true, but we need only look as far as this past summer to notice how extremely we picked up that pace. Though we live mostly off the grid, we cannot separate from the rest of our human species. The world is getting faster, and from inside ourselves we feel impulsed to keep up. Television, and especially commercials, faster than ever in their jump cuts, are one reflection of this.

There are many possible reasons for this, but to my mind one stands out: fear of death. A fear of not getting everything we want done before we start to become decrepit and become incapable of realizing our dreams and doing everything we judge we need to do so that those dreams may reach fruition. To compensate for this unresolved terror, we move fast. We get ahead of ourselves, we leave the moment, our bodies. We overplan, strategize and think, our lightning-quick minds three moves ahead of what we are doing right now. We don’t notice what our bodies are actually doing and feeling, right now. We breathe shallowly and unconsciously. And from Middle Earth, Treebeard sighs and shrugs his shoulders.

What can be done to slow down and live deliberately? There are several possibilities to play with. Try taking some time every day to sit and breathe deeply and slowly for a few minutes. Then, while continuing to breathe, continue moving through your day, in slow motion. It doesn’t have to be ultra-slow-mo, just slower than your normal pace. Notice what “comes up” in you as a result; do you feel impatience, harsh words in your head to get a move on, dire predictions of missed deadlines? If you feel emotions arise as a result, release them in the ways that work for you. That internal pressure to move faster is real; you are not making it up. Let it whirl past you, let that energy leave you in its wake.

Personally, the best way I have found to cool down my own pace is a daily practice of Somatic exercises. They are a brillliant body meditation, an organic slowdown for my entire system, and contain a plethora of health benefitsI like to practice mindful movement when I have completed my daily routine. Yoga may accomplish the same things for you; at any rate, you may be able to find a body-centered practice that works for you if you intend to bring yourself present and reduce your “hastiness quotient”.

The reality is, we do sometimes need to move quickly in order to accomplish things in certain time frames, and that must be allowed without a new reason for feeling guilty at having to move expediently. Even Treebeard knows there is a time for action. Hom-hooooooom!!

Spirit has to commit to the rest of itself; the mental, emotional and physical bodies, in order for us as whole beings to be fully embodied and present. So what’s our side of it, how do we have responsibility to draw our spirits to us, and keep them with us? Desire is a key. We call on the angels, we call on ascended masters, we call on devas and faeries, we call on Jesus, we call on Buddha, we pray to God. The step we may have been missing here is to consciously call on our personal spirits to be present with us, to guide us, to help us be big, to bridge the gap to the Divine.

Our spiritual power is relatively untapped, and having a close, honest look at our misfired lives reveals a reflection of this latency, manifested as a lack of flow, a lack of abundance, a lack of grace. Certainly we all have moments and seasons of time when these gifts are present with us, but those moments pass, and quite often we find ourselves wanting and experiencing lack. Certain bodies of so-called spiritual wisdom have wanted to distract us from our subjective reality’s truth that we do indeed feel lack. We are told to look at all we have, look at how much better we have it than the people in (fill in name of 3^rd world country here). We have to get real with how we feel, and not compare ourselves out of our true feelings there.

It’s a complex loop. True, unadulterated desire for spirit can draw and keep spirit present, but in our emotional bodies we have to deal with the hopelessness and old denied rages and hurts at having deeply desired spirit in the past only to have spirit not come no matter how much we wanted it to come. We have judgments holding these old feelings in place that say, among other things, that desire for spirit’s power is wrong, that desire to be one with our spirits doesn’t help anyway so why bother feeling desire. These judgments, and others like them, need release in the manner described in the article on Judgment Release, as do the old, held feelings with them. The more we can do this, the more present our spirit can be with us, if we can dare to reach for it again. Healing for this part of us might look like asking God for help in this area, to help guide our personal spirit back to us, to help our spirit integrate itself as part of the whole being, to help each of us know individually how to attract and keep our spiritual body present and aligned with us.

One last key aspect of healing with our spiritual bodies is cultivating a sense of faith that what we want, finding our right place and path in life, will come to us via our spirit once we put it out there. Trust and faith in whatever we call God, and in our spirit, can come once we move through all old anger and hopelessness and hurt towards Spirit for not being there for us in the past.

“Are you suggesting I not be in the Oneness all the time? You can’t be saying you want me to go and experience that? That’s far too messy for me. Emotions flaring up at a moment’s notice? Body pain? No thank you. I’ll just be here, meditating on the light. Why should I have to go where they are? They can come up here and be with me if they want me! Soooooo unevolved, that “basic self”. Hmphf!!”

In the so-called New Age movement, even hinting that the spiritual body of a person is not already perfect and exalted beyond the need for evolution is tantamount to blasphemy. After all, aren’t our spirits perfect reflections of the perfect God, who “obviously” has no need to evolve? One thing necessary for mind and spirit to notice, however, is that the prevailing attitude inherent in the monologue above has not achieved healing on the planet to date. In fact, it may be important for this part of our being to notice that we seem to be heading in the opposite direction of healing as a species en toto. I’d like to believe (hope?) that escalating animosity and amplified overpowering in the world is simply the equivalent of a light bulb burning brighter before it burns out completely.

Still, we have no guarantees about that, and it behooves all parts of our being, especially the spiritual body, to descend fully into the physical and come to balance with all parts of the self, if human beings are to achieve healing as connected individuals and as a whole. Perhaps the “rise above it” philosophy is not the answer. Perhaps true Oneness is not just Oneness of that which is already Light, but Oneness of all “holy” essence, which is in fact comprised of the physical, emotional, mental and spiritual.

One of the keys to healing everything in us is full commitment of our spiritual selves (or consciousness) to stay present and embodied. The next time you are in pain, allow yourself, with intent to do so and willingness to drop distractions, to become fully present at the heart of that pain, be it emotional or physical. Drop as deeply into the center of your pain as you can, and stay there for as long as you can, feeling and experiencing all that you feel and experience. Instead of rising above the pain, allow your consciousness to sink into it. Imagine yourself a deep-sea diver entering a cave, breathing light into the strong feelings or physical sensations of pain as you cry them, moan them, scream them or simply quietly feel them. Hold off on the pain medication for as long as you can. Notice how your experience shifts when your spiritual body drops in. Accept what is going on without trying to channel or suppress it in any way. Breathe deeply, slowly, and without effort or push, if that is possible.

It’s more than a meditation, it’s pure experience. Even if its only seconds at a time before you jump out, the power of the spirit to effect healing with its mere presence, co-existing fully in physical experience with the rest of you in a completely present moment, receiving without judgment all that you feel (while perhaps releasing judgments, as described last issue) can bring huge shifts. The longer and more often you can practice this, the better, faster and more effective your healing in the issue du jour can be.