Reflections: Cosmic lightning bolt

Ten years ago a cosmic lightning bolt struck through my energy system. It was 5^th of April, 2005 and I was participating in a week long shamanic workshop in Scotland exploring my zodiac through shamanic journeying. On the last day the group did a procession to a power point where allegedly the energies of Venus connect with the core of the Earth. Already at the beginning of the procession I started feeling very weird, my energy body was expanding rapidly on its own accord and I could not make sense of what was happening. Simultaneously the feeling and the sensation was that my physical body was shrinking and getting weaker and weaker as the increased high voltage energy took hold of me. I had great difficulties following the procession getting up along the spiraling path to the top. Somewhere in my being I knew something substantial was going on and I tried to surrender, but some fear crept in as my ego fought and tried to understand the impossible. Finally at the top of the power point I collapsed and fell on my knees with my head to the ground just sobbing out of exhaustion and the shire power of the expansion, in great bewilderment and with excruciating pain all over my physical body. My energy field continued to expand further and I lost my outer sight, my consciousness partially leaving the body and within seconds or what seemed instantaneous I was transported into a blazing white light penetrating all layers of my being, also the physical body, all the way down to the bones. I was literally electrified with an enormous power as if struck by lightning.

The pain was unbearable, yet there was a sense of layered presence and somewhere a feeling of surrender and clarity, some part of me was saying it’s all right, just go with it. A strange telepathic transmission took place, scattering my world view forever through this all-encompassing experience. One of the things the blazing light was saying “this is who you are”, this is “who everybody is if only they knew”. I was muttering “you must have the wrong person, I’m not ready for this” but the light disagreed.

I literally thought I was dying, but after a while – I was told later by those around me that it was about 20 minutes – I started to feel the earth underneath my body again, my consciousness slowly returning. I was so weak I had to be helped down the path; my body had lost all its strength. My friends helped me inside the building, laid me on the floor and tucked me under a blanket, my body was shivering and ice cold. Someone brought Rescue Remedy and dropped a few drops under my tongue. A few hours later I was brought home and fell into my bed sleeping 30 hours in one go, trying to recover from what could only be described as a traumatic event for the body, the personality and my ego.

It took me months before I could start to make some initial sense (if that’s even possible) of what had happened to me. I wrote down the experience in order to ground it and help integrate. I did not speak to anyone about it; at the time I did not know who to turn to and somehow knew this was outside most people’s experience, even those on a spiritual path, at least those around me and that I would be quite alone in my exploration into what had happened to me. Eventually this pushed me into an extensive (slightly obsessive for some years, I can say now) study into the Esoteric Philosophies and Ageless Wisdom traditions of the world searching for a more grounded understanding into my nature in hope of some explanation to this lightning bolt. In the coming years the peak experiences continued although they were not as dramatic as the one I have described here, nevertheless I entered a period where my ego was scattered and all the conditioned ways in which I had identified with my personality were ripped apart, rendering a total redefining of my identity and my identification.

It has taken me many, many years (still work in progress) to integrate the shift and I’ve gone through stages of delusion and moments of inflated ego-aggrandizement to surrender to the Divine. I’ve learned that peak-experiences come and go and in-between we integrate and continue to “chop wood and carry water”. It is a continuing practice in surrender and humbleness in the face of the great mystery between the dance of the Divine Mother and the Divine Father.

A year after this event I withdrew for 2,5 years into seclusion to the Finnish country-side renting a cottage by the Baltic Sea with vast forests just behind the house. My nervous system was hyper and on high alert most of the time as I continued my study and meditation practice, which felt more like a process of downloading and remembering, I did hardly anything else, but I felt held, inspired and guided in my solitude. Thank God for the forest and its balancing quality on my energy field, it was so fiery and electric most of the time. Just outside my door there was a triangle of conifers, I used to sit under them, sometimes in the middle of the night, to help calm my energy body, they became important allies in my quest to connect and stay on Earth.

The cosmic bolt had ignited a partial kundalini awakening and since then I have been in a cosmic washing machine, its centrifugal spin, clearing and purifying my soul field. I understood fairly quickly that the kundalini awakening was partial because I was not fully incarnated in my physical body; the trunk to carry the electrical currents was not strong nor grounded enough. During these years of spiritual emergence I had a lot of pain in my body, my bones and my spine, sometimes it felt like my little house and I would go up in flames as even the house started sparkling with electrical currents.

To get myself fully into my body has been a process of putting the “genie back into the bottle” and for the body and the personality this has not always been easy, but finally after about 9 years since this burning ground was ignited by the lightning bolt I can say I have arrived home to the core of the Divine Mother and her nurturing primordial darkness without losing track of the light of the Divine Father. The pain is gone, the currents of my energies flow now more evenly above and below and my heart has expanded remarkably.

In the process I lost my outer financial security and my worldly belongings but gained my sanity, humanity and divinity. I am forever grateful.

“The shock throughout all realms is a Call for the realization of harmony, cooperation and of unity”.

"Beloved Cosmic Mother & Father, if I ever forget that I am your beloved, please find a way to remind me - thank you!"

Reflections - The Cross

THE CROSS

I arrived in my home country with the intention of a longer 2 months stay reconnecting with this land and taking stock of my life, reconnecting with the ancient orders of my ancestors. Walking along the shores of this city where I lived for so many years and having just walked past the local church with its huge metal cross overpowering the landscape I reflect on times gone by, my relationship and non-relationship with the religious church institution and the different dances I've danced with traditional religion, spirituality and esoteric philosophy most of my adult life.

I smile when I remember that I had my confirmation in this church 33 years ago, a private ordeal because my husband to be wanted a church wedding. I had left the church at the age of 18 at the first possible option of individual choice influenced by the atheist stance of my primary family. Although my mother had chosen to stay part of the church until her children could make their own choice. Usually kids go through confirmation classes at the age of 15. Also I had gone with my friends to the information session at the local parish for the upcoming classes, but after listening to the priest for 15 minutes, I stood up and declared “This is not for me” and walked out. At my later confirmation at age 27 the priest mistakenly called me by wrong first name throughout the ceremony. From some kind of misplaced courtesy I did not correct him, nor did my husband to be. 

This humored me at the time and I remember thinking “this is a joke and a bit of a fraud anyway” stepping into God’s house just because someone else wants me to. Later I received a long apologetic letter from the priest. He eventually had noticed his mistake and ensured me, that despite using the wrong name I had been accepted into God’s house.  But was it a kind of God’s house I wanted to be in; an authentic channel for spirit and the divine I was later in life to yearn and long for so intensely? Some years after this confirmation I left the church again as part of my divorce proceedings. It was a short marriage which produced a beautiful son and an equally short visit within the church institution to which I have never returned.  But God works in mysterious ways and the church does not have exclusive rights to the Holy Soul nor the Holy Spirit nor the mysteries of life. Maybe these early experiences were already foreboding the unconventional life that followed.

Now 33 years later having opened up to my own soul and divine essence I find myself ever so often bathing in pregnant darkness full of light and love, mind still, heart open, my chalice and aura a magnetic and radiant cosmic blessing. I say most of the time, because it is challenging to continuously stay in this heightened frequency and emanate a high vibration (really an electromagnetic voltage) all the time in this density of life on Earth. This is especially difficult for a person with a very acute high sense perception and sensitive energy field which taps into the endless suffering of this world. It has been important to learn protection techniques, hold boundaries, sometimes just withdraw staying in and with the pain, bringing conscious awareness, the light of my Soul & Spirit, into the mix and allowing the discomfort to be transmuted.  I AM a house of the Divine, just like you and you and you are, we all are - my relationship to the symbol of the cross has been radically transformed by my own spiritual inquiry.

We all carry this inner cross and therefore are part of the collective cross of humanity as a whole. The outer form hides the true temple or like Lao Tzu said “the tangible outer form has advantages, but it is the intangible that makes it useful” (relevant and potent). The inner state of being is always reflected in our outer visible life. The aim is to find the balance within our own inner cross, the hub and center of which is our heart center, the point of equilibrium and the bridge between our vertical axis and our horizontal axis within our energy field, between our humanity and our divinity, suspended as we all are between Heaven and Earth.

To understand this inner cross I have had to look deep within beyond the outer form (matter) into the many layers and bandwidths of frequencies related to my interpenetrating energy nature, into the immanent woven layers that constitute a human being, my physical, emotional, mental and spiritual selves, eventually connecting, inviting, invoking, entering and infusing my soul and merging into a more direct dialogue with the spiritual realms. The energy behind every form veils a divine idea, a truth or a divine concept. See beyond the surface and contact the divine idea which gave birth to the form, to me and to you, to all life and find your own inner temple, your own inner cross and divinity. It was not a coincidence we are told The Christ was crucifixes on the cross; a metaphor of the inner cross we all must travel and mount.

This inner cross and the field surrounding it, when purified, eventually reveals a radiant magnetic center; an expanded open and aching heart; shows us the unquestionable preciousness of each and every soul on this journey called life.

Many non-duality teachers emphasize that we are both the drop in the ocean and the ocean itself. The way to this realization goes via mounting our own cross, the drop drops into the ocean of One Humanity, into an embodied experience of the Unity of all Life.

Aligning and tuning into the vertical arm of the cross takes us both into the heights and the depths of spirit. Theosophist Helena Blavatsky’s famous axiom “Spirit is matter at its highest vibration and matter is spirit at its lowest” – reveals the Unity of all life-forms, all life is sacred. I often use the analogy of a time-glass or a torus when I try and describe my energy field, my main energy centers stacked in a rung in the middle of a toroidal field. Current new physics show us that all forms from atom to human, to planet, to solar system and galaxy are embedded in an inherent toroidal field of energy circulating from above to below and from below to above.

In expanded states we reach into the depths and shadows of our being resting in the embrace and the darkness of the Sacred Feminine her Holy Soul Sophia, touching and anchoring at the core of the Earth. Or we soar into our inner heights reaching our soul and spirit, consciousness expanding into Planetary-, Solar Systemic and the Galactic levels – our Divine Father, Holy Spirit and the Cosmic Christ. This height and depth collapsing in our heart, duality eventually resolved, all opposites and polarities dissolved resting in an all embracing Unity, transfigured the veil ripped apart.  The soul has incarnated and fused fully with the personality, the soul’s task is done; its field has been purified. The causal body, the house of the soul has dissolved; pure spirit has entered resulting in a radiant heart, a radiant aura and a life of service, of up-liftment and betterment for the good of the whole. This is the invitation, promise and purpose of our Inner Cross.

The horizontal arm of the cross represents our inner yin/yang, the dance and balance between our feminine and our masculine sides and the service we render to the world. When the pregnant darkness of the feminine merges with the light of the masculine and vice verse, inner Unity emerges holding both sides of our being in balance. Thus peace and harmony are restored in us and in the world. It is an inner and an outer marriage, a consummation where only Love and Service to Life prevails.

“The heart is a temple, but not an abode of idols. Thus we are not against the construction of a temple, but we object to fetishism and to bazaars. Likewise, when we speak of constructing a temple like a heart, we do not mean that it be of heart-shaped design, we speak of its inner significance. A temple cannot exist without realization of the infinite chain; so, too, the heart contacts all the sensations of the Cosmos. The heart’s anguish or joy inter-resounds with the far-off spheres. Why, then, is anguish sensed more often than joy? Of course, the constant cosmic perturbations agitate the heart that adheres to them. Therefore is the service of such a heart so great upon the scale of the world. Help the structure of the world.......Not without cause was the heart marked by the sign of the cross. Thus the sign of the cross eternally accompanied the temple of the heart.” Heart – Agni Yoga series (1932)

The Three Crosses...

The theme of all three Crosses is fusion and integration. The fusion of the personality into one functioning whole; the fusion of soul and personality consciously; the fusion of the threefold expression of divinity—Monad, ego and personality—so that there is an appearance of the blended energies. The keynote of their influences is the power to include and the full expression simultaneously, in time and space, of the vertical and the horizontal life.

Esoteric Astrology Alice A. Bailey.

Reflections - Trust the decent

“The full experience of a negative emotion is the funeral pyre of that emotion” – Stanislav Grof

I’ve experienced the truth of this powerful sentence many times, i.e. being with the healing power of deep diving into the unconscious, of sitting in the fire of some shadow hiding and suppressing a negative emotion and some old fear lurking deep within the many layers of my psyche. And if it’s there, it is also in the psychophysical body and the energetic reality of my being. We know that the unconscious governs to a large degree our lives, therefore getting to these layers is a prerequisite when seeking holistic wholeness and expansion of our consciousness. 

Here are a few examples from my own life.

In the mid 90-ties I did several Holotropic Breath Work sessions with a psychiatrist in Finland. They were all extraordinarily powerful and life-changing. In one of them I re-lived a near drowning experience I had had at the age of 4 which then led me in the same session to experience my own birth, getting in touch with the panic and pain of pushing through the birth channel, the all-encompassing experience of leaving the safety of the womb. During the session my body went into total contraction, excruciating pain, breathing became very shallow and it felt like I was breathing like a fish with gilds. Somewhere in the midst of the pain my consciousness, it’s witnessing awareness, was present with what I was doing, what I had consented to and the willingness to go on this inner journey into the depths of my psyche. I knew I was lying on a mattress, hearing powerful music, hyper-ventilating to help open the portals, which are like ventilation valves between the conscious, sub-conscious and un-conscious layers – I felt the safety of the hand of my partner in crime on my solar plexus and heard the voice of the psychiatrist guiding the process. Even though the pain was unbelievably strong a part of me just said “go with it, go deeper”.  As I had the courage to do so, my loving witnessing presence held me and my body started releasing enormous amounts of energy. That day I incarnated a bit more into my being, more energy of my greater self became available.

The “cloud nine”, the sense of release I drifted into after these sessions lasted for months and was beautiful, elevated and uplifting. Somewhat to my surprise worry had vanished – I mean vanished forever. That was the end of WORRY, its funeral pyre!

Another healing journey took me deeper. This came as part of a yearlong Cellular Energetic Healing training I did some years ago in Scotland. A training which teaches the Barbara Brennan concepts of defences mechanisms we all have. We develop these defences in our early childhood and take in, absorb traumas defending ourselves against whatever life throws at us before we can really have a conscious understanding about much anything. The first seven years of our lives we are like wet sponges, our senses absorbing everything directly into our psychophysical and energetic make-up.

As part of the training we had to do our own psycho-therapy and I had fortunately found a therapist/healer who worked also directly on the energetic level. In one session, in which I had started to talk about my mother, I got in touch with pain in my lower belly and lower back. My therapist invited me to go deeper into the pain and I plunged into a semi-altered state where I experienced myself as just an embryo in my mother’s tummy. There was so much fear in this state, my consciousness wanted to leave, i.e. disassociate and go numb, but the therapist kept repeating, her eyes locked on me: “stay with it Micaela, don’t leave your body”. For what seemed like a long time I sat there wiggling my legs to help stay with it and just experiencing the pain. The fear started releasing from my kidneys, lower back and legs. I went into a state of panic and close to passing out, but the therapist held her gaze and the safety of the space. Cold sweat was running all over the body as the fear let go. Afterwards I could hardly walk, I was so exhausted. The nervous system took days to re-calibrate itself to a new more expanded presence of my energy. Again, I had incarnated more, my tendency to go numb at any threat released and FEAR had at least a small funeral pyre. Not sure if it’s all gone.

When my mother was pregnant with me she had serious lower back problems and needed surgery just after I was born. She had been through a difficult time, a lot of emotional upheaval and distress, all of which the little embryo which was to become me absorbed already in the womb. Now-a-days we have thankfully a much greater understanding of how the pre-birth and early childhood environments affect us.

More recently another suppressed negative emotion knocked on the door of my conscious awareness. A deep grief I had tucked away 40 years ago made itself known and demanded attention. In my 20ties my primary family spiralled into years of crisis which dissolved and destroyed the family as a unit of safety and care. At the time I went into survival mode, caring for my then suicidal and depressed mother and my 9 years younger little sister. There was no opportunity, nor awareness by those around me at the time to help process the grief we all probably plunged into, thus the grief got relegated into my unconscious and my shadow and has lived a life of its own, to some extent directing life-events ever since. What you hide from yourself will eventually try and make itself known to you through other people or life-events; we repeat unresolved negative emotions and patterns in order to heal them by attracting similar experience over and over again. They come disguised through what we attract and or repulse in our lives.

When trauma occurs, something happens which we are unable to digest, the energy around this becomes frozen in space and time. In this sense every trauma has a cosmic address. But life moves on and the creativity of life within the pattern tries to the best of its ability to deal with whatever was going on. Yet part of the energy got frozen and now clearly, I got the opportunity 40 years later to unfreeze this part.

Here it was! A protected shield broke and a dam of tears burst open. This shield had protected my sacral center, solar plexus and heart centre all these years. I could no longer avoid or push it away. Instead I opened up to it, allowed it and grieved for months and months, to the extent that I had tears in my eyes upon waking up in the morning before a conscious thought could enter. At the time it felt like an endless river of tears, a quiet emptying of the accumulated grief but eventually I started feeling better and the heavy burden lifted.

At the time I needed a sick-note from a doctor in order to allow the process to unfold in its own timing. I was a bit nervous going to the National Health Service, thinking how do I explain to a young doctor that I am grieving something which happened 40 years ago? But I was lucky and met an understanding doctor, not until the third visit - this process did take time - did he offer to prescribe some anti-depressants, but I stayed resolute and said “no thank you, I’m just grieving, I’m not depressed; it will pass”. And it did, but not until I had emptied myself fully and seen the subtle workings this shadow of grief had caused in my life. Full awareness needed to come in together with reconciliation and forgiveness. In the end a beautiful process really, although painful at the beginning when I just needed to stay with it, feeling the feelings without trying to explain them too much.  

I had carried these frozen unresolved energies in my sacral centre, solar plexus, my heart, lymphatic system, shoulders and neck. During the process, in addition to welling tears, my lymph’s especially under my armpits released energy which came out as terrible rashes and my lungs and lymph’s produced so much mucus, so I was literally spitting out my grief. I had pain in my shoulders and my heart was aching. Yet, by the end of it I felt so much lighter, my whole rib-cage had expanded, my shoulders moved back a bit and my solar plexus felt softer. My posture had changed. The heart centre opened more, melted into a greater understanding and the throat centre was able to express more. The grieving process eventually took me to a place of greater TRUTH and AUTHENTICITY in myself. Again I had re-claimed a part of myself, a part that got lost many moons ago.

Prior to this grief process I had recognized an ancestral pattern which I could call the “absent father” and I had prayed with my soul to help me do my bit of releasing this pattern as I did not want it to pass on to my son. He grew up without his father, my father left our family, his father died when my father was only 2 and the men before that were mostly in the military; therefore likely not very present with their families either. So I knew I was dealing with a pattern that was unresolved in the family line and inherited in the epigenetic markers of our genes and healing it would bring ripple effects throughout the family, those who have been and those yet to come.

In hindsight all happened in “perfect timing”, pushed by the impending death of my father, my wish to clear the pattern and my son’s wish to create a family. A graceful reconciliation with my father unfolded, I finally had context, could understand his life more and the unknown ghost in the field lifted. My heart opened in compassion towards all involved. Since then my father has passed away and my son and his partner have welcomed their beautiful daughter into their lives. All is well!

From my 30 years of conscious inner spiritual work I know that my soul transmutes and purifies larger fields and that everything which shows up in my life is my own karmic appearances, soul-contracts, old habits of entangled ancestral fields of many lifetimes, therefore mine to deal with in this present time. Only that which is brought into awareness can be healed and as the esoteric philosophy postulates “all illness and disease (not at ease) is inhibition of soul life”. When the soul is able to fully incarnate into all corners of my Universe health, wholeness, balance, harmony and peace can arise. Who wouldn’t want this! Yet the journey there takes us through the shadow-land of ourselves, our ancestors and fields of energy our soul has gathered and chosen to work with.

We have to recognize the quantitative and the qualitative, the physical and the psychic and embrace both of these two sides of our reality simultaneously. Work with the inner and the outer, physics and psyche, matter and mind – all complementary aspects of the same reality.

My advice though is not to do this kind of work alone, unless you are hundred percent sure you can stay with your witnessing awareness and your soul. Most of us need a safe holding place to go to these layers of our being, be it a good therapist/healer or a safe group setting. It is good to have a respect and an honouring of the defences we keep as they were life-saving at the time we took them on and we will not let them go until there is actually a readiness to do so.

Heart Center / Heart Chakra / Fourth Bandwidth

Heart center

As humanity is still very much polarized in the emotional body, these writings about the energy centers reflect mainly the challenge of overcoming emotional imbalances.

The twelve petal heart center located near the heart between the 4^th and 5^th thoracic vertebrae, just below and in-between the etheric shoulder blades, affects the function of our thymus, immune system, heart, blood circulation, lungs, lymphatic system and breasts. It also affects the spleen together with the solar plexus. The center is divided into lower heart and higher heart – lower connecting with self awareness and higher with added group awareness. It connects us with the feeling consciousness of the soul and in the later stages of the heart opening anchors the energy of pure spirit. It transmits energy from the love petals of the soul. Love is a coherent force that makes all things whole, for where there is love no harm can come. 

Solar plexus has to do with personal desires and wants, whereas lower heart with personal love and higher heart with impersonal, broadly inclusive group love. This is where we bridge between the purely personal to the beginnings of soul influenced impersonal and seek connection and right relationship to the different spheres of life in a new more inclusive way. The heart center opens us to the awareness of love and group needs, and these can initially seem to be in conflict with the self oriented outlook that the solar plexus energizes.

As the heart opens the sense of who you are becomes bigger. As consciousness is a widening of light and expansion the open heart recognizes the “I am part of everything” and starts to feel the influence of existence itself. This brings for the first time a sense of going beyond your notion of pure physicality, emotionalism and mentality – you are something more. “I am not my body, not my emotions, nor my thoughts – I am an eternal soul and spirit having a human experience”. The perspective changes and expands remarkably and a whole new vast vista opens up.

The heart weaves and begins the integration and the healing process. We may ask ourselves “what would I be without my drama and my story, what would I be without all the “stuff” I have suppressed” and we start to develop a much more integrated view of ourselves. As we connect with something greater we experience a lot of release and relief, elevation, lightness and freedom and we become genuinely curious about life, truth, existence and God – a longing awakens to know who we really are and where we came from and why are we here. We are tapping into a source that is much more, is mysterious to our ordinary day-to-day consciousness and elevated.

We start to take others into consideration and develop kindness, compassion and care. Our understanding of life’s many relationships deepens and we enter the bridge between the purely human personality based expression meeting the part of us which is informed by our soul and our inclusive divine spirit.

Our beliefs reflect belonging and we get glimpses of understanding that our experience is our own responsibility – some of which chocks us, some of which we may delight in. Yet, life does become more trustworthy again and there is a strong longing for connection. We seek our own healing and this lower heart opening is a great sphere of self-development, inner growth and improvement. We may seek therapy, counselling, healing and spiritual groups to find like-minded people.  

The validation comes from how we experience our inner space. In the previous stages this did not yet enter, we were still in the outer world of matter, now we are curious of the inner world of feeling, sensations and soul, deeper causes inside. We look for ease, flow, rightness, softening of struggle and pain. We want an authenticity we haven’t sought before and we want to know ourselves on a deeper level.

Stress can unbalance the heart center, causing blood pressure imbalances and insomnia. Also greed and over concern or protection of one’s so-called “rights” can bring this center into an unhealthy state.

Ego identity is still present as the lower heart opens but it is behaving itself and seeking identification with a new sphere of meaningfulness, people and connections. We find current day spiritual materialism here, the jargon and the spiritual platitudes, all part of the group of people seeking a new sphere of belonging. The New Age market place, fairs of glitter, bumper stickers and paraphernalia of angels, crystals and incenses etc. You have to at least do yoga, although with mostly body preoccupation, to feel part of this new sphere of exploration your heart has invited you towards and you may seek a new way of feeling special, a trap of the ego, to feel the belonging you seek. Later your yoga practice may indeed become a real portal to the inner self-inquiry and deeper alchemy.

This is a huge bandwidth and encompasses all forms of spiritual seekers, some of which, if they stay in this sphere alone can develop real smugness, yet another trap on the way. As the soul influences already a bit, the heart would not open otherwise, we look towards going within to meet our needs. We are kinder towards ourselves and others, more accepting, humorous and philosophical. We are choosing and being more pro-active about what we want and how we engage with life.

The journey into the depths of our hearts is long and there is often a lot of healing needing to take place, of self-acceptance, potential overwhelm of emotions, looking at our defenses and melting and transmuting energies further. If we get past the lower heart to integrating the upper heart, deeper genuine work starts and humbleness enters, we remember and get glimpses of what the soul already knows and we enter a genuine spiritual inquiry, find our path and our calling, eventually reaching the point of no return. The heart starts to fully function after, what in the esoteric philosophy is called the second initiation or the baptism, where one ceases to think solely as an individual and in addition becomes attuned to group consciousness. By the time we have fully embraced this bandwidth, all upper centers would have opened to a greater degree in unison with the heart center and we enter into a life of service and dedication – a fairly high state of consciousness. The brow center and the heart become fully alive and the brow centers gland the pituitary body enters into activity. The long healing journey, which may take life-times, takes us through our childhood wounding to ancestral patterns and past life energies seeking healing and redemption, all depending on our souls purpose and stage of evolution.

When the deeper spiritual inquiry starts we would have embarked on a real conscious soul search, building through meditation practice our connection with the downward gazing soul. We seek the stillness; observe our witnessing awareness and engage in self inquiry. As the heart starts to open it awakens the soul and she starts to pay attention to what her reflection, the personality is doing. A process of infusion, invocation, evocation and integration brings us to greater soul infusion, magnetism, health and wholeness. We open ourselves to the unknown and surrender. Dedicated and disciplined spiritual practice and meditation enters and we do them regularly, daily.

The heart is a real choice point. Our relating to the world changes to that of compassion, respect for diversity and a willingness to be part of the solution rather than the problem and we desperately try and find how we can contribute. Yet we also realize that we are not yet a fully embodied divinity walking our solution, emanating divine Love continuously. Actually we become acutely aware of what still needs correcting, integrating and healing. Love, awe, reverence to all life, wonder enters and a willingness to do our inner work consistently. In esoteric philosophy it is said that aspirants do what they want, but disciples do what is needed, they are at this stage locked by the soul, the inner spheres of their aura and their etheric body, connections to greater streams of life, follow instructions and guidance.

Conceptually we may get glimpses of the oneness and the wholeness, have some experiential peak experiences, yet they are fleeting and we find ourselves still in separation. We know, but cannot yet embody nor take full ownership of the expanded, all-encompassing Be-ness or Absolute Truth. Knowing and living it are two different matters. Knowing God conceptually and living God are still miles apart. Yet at the top of this bandwidth, the wide open heart fully connected and the soul infused into our whole being the experiences of truth realized can come. At this point there is “no my soul or thy soul – only one soul of humanity”. A soul field currently in huge distress, yet for the individual reaching this stage it somehow bothers less. You may still engage in the suffering of humanity, it may even hurt more especially if you are a kinaesthetic sensitive, feeling the pain of the world, but you also understand that every individual soul is exactly where it needs to be in its own evolutionary journey. You realize that every soul is you, as you are them. You become a contributing emanation into the collective field and counterbalance some of that suffering.

A lot of courage is needed to reach truth realized, as the subtler shadow imprints in our soul field seek our awareness. We are both remembering and forgetting; when triggers come our way we may still fall back on our separation. The finer the energy we magnetize and attract, the more subtle the traps.

As our aspiration is to firmly connect with our soul, it may come as a surprise to many spiritual seekers that we have to work through every single resonance from the lower bandwidths to reach our ultimate goal. And as the actual remembering of our soul field doesn't start until the heart has readily opened, we find ourselves re-entering, re-capitulating some of the lower bandwidths to integrate the hurts, wounding and fear still lingering there.

We stand between worlds, often spacious, open, vulnerable and inquisitive. We recognize our egos, lower self story and see both our humanness and our divinity.

The challenge here becomes the legacy of old patterns of our many life times, how to grow beyond the initial realization and integrate more and more of who we truly are. There is always risk of ego claiming new ground, of getting too pleased with ourselves and our attainment. The shift between the lower heart to the upper heart is really asking for demonstration, spirit is requiring proof, embodiment and being real. We cannot take our baggage with us to heaven, nor bring an uplifting contribution by directing the beautiful vibration of heaven fully down to Earth unless we do the multi-generational, multi life-time work that’s needed at this stage.

Our responsibility now is to stay with and persevere with our meditation practice, be authentically present to what is real and arising in the moment and have the courage to go even deeper. We are sometimes left to our own devices, in the later stages of the journey, without a mentor, guide or guru in order to embody the demonstration needed. You are asked to use your heart to deal with everything you brought with you as your soul incarnated and your ultimate authority is your own soul and the divine God spark within you. Time and space are relative processes, all is present in the now. You work with both personal and Universal collective patterns.

Very slowly the triggers and tests diminish as you start to work more with existence rather than against it. Before the upper heart opening we use existence against ourselves in order to find our way through life experience, through the neither this nor that, we eventually find our path. Life becomes simpler and more joyous.

The burning ground,
To reach this stage we would have consciously and earnestly been surrendering and inviting our soul, the Divine Angel, to infuse us for a long time. Behind the slow opening we sense life, energy, spiritual embodiment and the fact of the soul, eternity living through us. Between lies what in esoteric philosophy is called the burning ground which has to be crossed. This represents all the karmic energies the soul has stored in its field since numerous lifetimes, since the divine spark set forth from Oneness. The question facing us now is whether our will and our surrender is strong enough to submit to the fires of the final purification. This is already a very high stage of development, the personality has become a useful instrument which the soul and spirit can use and it is a highly trained agent for service. It has, however, its points of weakness which are liable to present points of crisis and has likewise its points of strength, on the whole a dependable vessel or grail. The big question facing us here is whether we have the courage to cross this final burning ground to allow spirit full reign of our personality, allowing the divine total control. We have to bring the two aspects of our nature fully together, marry the divine feminine and the divine masculine in our hearts in full consciousness with clear intention. It is at this midway point of the heart where the great submission of the lower to the higher takes place. It is an "invocative decision" of the personality which, in time, produces and "evocative response" from the soul. This all takes place in the field of consciousness, the lesser light moves towards the greater light of your own being - a true light in its own right and the personality is absorbed into the greater light of the soul. The personality becomes lost in sight in the radiant aura of the Angel. 

The journey of expansion brings more and more light of presence, awareness, expansion and harmony into the mix and reverberates throughout your field into the collective field of humanity. Your soul would have brought its contribution to the whole and accomplished its task incarnating fully into all corners of your Universe. The body of the soul, the causal body dissolved there is only pure spirit flowing through the personality. It is Existence itself experiencing itself through your specific, unique expression and fully embodied here on Earth. This is the eye of the needle which asks a lot of faith and courage to step through into Oneness.

“An awake heart is like the sky that pours light” - Hafiz

It is all an inside job!

Inspired by my own journey, study in esoteric philosophy, the ancient wisdom tradition, especially esoteric soul based healing and notes from a recent workshop with Jeddah Mali.

Solar Plexus Center / Solar Plexus Chakra / Third Bandwidth

Solar Plexus

As humanity is still very much polarized in the emotional body, these writings about the energy centers reflect mainly the challenge of overcoming emotional imbalances.

The third bandwidth finds its expression through the solar plexus. It has its entrance point at the 12^th thoracic and the 1^st lumbar vertebrae and is related to your pancreas, stomach, digestive- and elimination systems, intestines, liver and gallbladder as well as the spleen. If we have not been able to harmonize our imbalances of fear and/or relational issues in the two bandwidths below this one, they spill over to the solar plexus which governs our overall emotional state of health. Here we make all issues very personal and we know the “crunch” of the solar plexus when we feel angry or upset.  This center connects us strongly to our emotional body and to the unconscious and is the primary center for moving energies upwards. The solar plexus can be over-active by emotional over-reactions and/or blocked in those who are fearful of their own or other people’s emotions. Most astral lower, often glamorized psychic phenomenon is connected to this center. In the esoteric philosophy it is often called the “furnace” of emotions. We find moodiness, worry, tension, agitated excitement, stress, temper, irritation, selfishness and obsession here. All of these can be said to be psychological cleavages, both deep-seated and superficial.

Even though this center is still highly emotional in its nature we have moved from an unstructured bandwidth to a more structured, mental one and this center quickly responds and reacts with thought. Through it we try and create order and structure and initial release from any emotional upset. When we are in this center we believe our thoughts and emotions, many live on and for their emotions. A thought comes in, for instance “I am angry or jealous” it initially provides a relief of naming the emotion we are dealing with. We try to think our way out of any uncomfortable emotion or conundrum of thoughts. Initially this gives us relief, yet potentially only pushes the real issue into the unconscious. We rationalize, intellectualize and project our discomfort outside of ourselves, anything which helps us avoid actually feeling what we are feeling.  In our mind, the reason we have discomfort is usually someone else’s fault, a specific person, a boss, a company, a society, a system, life itself – our reasons are endless. In our effort to control our emotional body we resort to inhibition, suppression, resulting in the solar plexus becoming a “great reservoir of retained energy”. The solar plexus can be very over-whelming. What is required, and comes with the opening of the heart center, is the transmutation of the emotions we have stored in the solar plexus into aspiration, altruism, compassion and love. The heart center reveals the solar plexus and with enough of the heart open a person seldom gets too embroiled in other people’s affairs.

Thought pollution is our single greatest threat emanating from imbalanced solar plexus’, but also from the two lower bandwidths. The world is a mere reflection of our individual and collective mind. The pollution that is choking our very life force arises from within us. Yet, we have created this system and we can undo it if we do our inner work to catch our own portion of the pollution and are able to nullify its effect on the collective field. The external reality we live in is merely a reflection of our individual and collective mind-set. What you will need to ask yourself is what kind of light are you spreading, what is your inner climate and how does it need to change. Where is your consciousness focused and how are you mirroring and receiving someone else’s light and/or distortions, the question must be what kind of energy are you disseminating? It takes some vigilance, as you are both the light and the mirror. Any negative thoughts you send out, will eventually return – in this respect we could say that climate change is an inner process.

Unfortunately our current one-sided reliance on mainstream science and academia belong here, they have become our new church if followed blindly and dogmatically. We think rational thinking is the pinnacle of our being and we are for instance not allowed, in most places, to bring our emotions into the workplace. Because this is a structured bandwidth, it gives us initially safety, and we try to resolve and control our more unstructured, often chaotic emotional expressions by pushing them under the radar of the socially acceptable norm of behavior. We put the lid on! This is a massive cul-de-sac. If we distance ourselves from our emotions we easily become arrogant thinking we are better, cooler, more sophisticated, more intelligent therefore better than our fellow human beings. We make a lot of comparison in this bandwidth to boost our self-esteem and our sense of self-worth. If we distance ourselves too much we get totally cut off from our emotions and create a very sterile and numb environment. The mind is a very beautiful tool, but it needs to be used wisely and not alone rule the show. Life can become very dry.

The issue here is superiority vs. inferiority. The body is seen as a machine, a power house of fitness and vitality. The emotions are either suppressed or controlled with all possible mind-games and means or alternatively dumped on others when we lose our control. We fear our own rage and anger, we fear our own weakness and vulnerability and we grow impatient and frustrated when confronted with these emotional states from the lower bandwidths, whether they surprise us in our own being, puffing up from below our self-created armor and lid or come toward us from other people. We just want everyone to behave!

This is where we maintain a fixed image and idea about our ego identity. It is something we defend if needed with passion. We have opinions, show ambition, we compete, judge, criticize and blame.  We can feel extremely self-righteous and actually what we are trying to do is to look better than others. There is intellectual rigidity here and a sense of superiority as others threaten our ego identity or challenge our beliefs. We seek mental validation and want other people to agree with us. We always know best and have answers to everything. It can become a very closed and arrogant circuit if we aren't willing and able to let go.

This bandwidth is the basis of all competition and striving for material success on the expense of others. The thinking is: “you can’t succeed without someone else loosing”. The American dream: "life should be better and richer and fuller for everyone, with opportunity for each according to ability or achievement" has turned sour if we, as so many do, only seek self-gratification and forget about other people and other life-forms.

We find validation from our attainment, status and recognition. All “isms” – apart from optimism, are here. We feel relieved when we acquire, control, harness money and possessions, power, influence and dominion. This bandwidth is very good with and works with words as it is the sphere of our lower mental capacity.   

This is also where we want to conform, not rock the boat – nobody wants a troublemaker. Yet we want to stand up as an individual and validate our individuality, yet we suffer if and when we compare with others endlessly and they may be more successful than we are. Alternatively the spiritual seeker turns this into “I am more spiritual than you are, my teacher/teaching/lineage is better than yours...etc.” The holier than thou people are found here. Because this is the “one-man-ship” bandwidth with everyone for him- or herself mentality we exploit, try to be special and have a desire to get ahead of the game.

We find the whole business, corporate, political and financial sectors mostly in this bandwidth. The missing piece is consciousness itself as it is not recognized nor factored into these spheres. The result of which we now see in the terrible exploitation of natural resources, in the environmental degradation, in the distinction of species and life on Earth, in the financial crisis’s and shortsightedness of corporate gain as well as in the endless increased of governmental bureaucracy. We are not in right relationship with life and we need our hearts to open to see this.

We are reluctant to forego ego as it is a threat to individual supremacy. People with power like their power, often over others and over existence itself. There is a huge delusion and a misunderstanding about the true source of power, i.e. spiritual power. The current awakening and grass roots movement under way, opening the collective human heart and searching for right relationship is a huge threat to the established order, operating primarily in this bandwidth, and therefore we see many fascist and controlling methods striking back at the revolutionary energy sweeping the planet at this time.

In this bandwidth we are conscious of self-image, our identity, ego, reason and perceptions of others. We may have a nagging fear of exposure, constriction, numbness, rigidity, smugness and we may feel indignant and keep secrets. It creates a lot of stress in our body system, not to be allowed or not to allow ourselves authenticity. We do not show our weaknesses but hide behind masks. The roles we take upon ourselves to play in this bandwidth are a cause of a lot of illness and disease (not at ease) in our being. The stress in our corporate and governmental institutional cultures is huge! Sometimes we take ourselves to exhaustion, burn-out and break down, we give up and the mind becomes quiet as we recognize that we cannot continue anymore. We do not see and we forget our own light and beauty, we cannot see the fullness of our being nor the light and beauty in others.

For a person studying the inner mysteries of life, this center represents a special challenge to overcome. When the solar plexus is highly developed and when it already connects slightly with the lower heart (self-awareness) and touches occasionally its corresponding higher buddic level, or touches the solar plexus' higher counter-part the atmic, abstract mind level, there is a risk of another illusion of exclusiveness and feeling special, of thinking one knows more about the hidden mysteries of life than the average person - and one usually does, but that is not the point. This is a plague that especially finds its home in esoteric groups and any hidden body of teachings found in all religious traditions. During the two thousand years of the era of Pisces patriarchal and male dominated hierarchical structures have seeped in everywhere and have loved this mental dominance and power over attitude, thus such manifestations are found in most religious institutions both in the East and the West and the energies of past karmic debts are still with us. Thankfully this is breaking down with the increasing influx of the energies of Aquarius which are much more inclusive and group oriented in their nature. Finding the balance point of inner masculine and feminine energies is the key and correcting force which eventually will bring the "cosmic dewdrop" into right balance between his/her humanity and divinity. But there is much work to do in this area as the sacred feminine has been suppressed and relegated into the shadow for such a long time. If this kind of superiority complex is still active and there is no willingness to embrace the heart; inviting its surrender, humility, equality and vulnerability or if there is no courage or awareness to enter the lower bandwidths to do the necessary healing of the shadow of the age of Pisces, we will not see, or it will take much longer to bring about, a more heart centered approach to goodwill, an orientation towards right relationship of humanity as one unified collective and a healthy custodianship towards Mother Earth. Remember the solar plexus is still a "one-man-ship" center of separation.

The panacea and elixir to get past this bandwidth is to open our hearts, yet people are initially afraid of this as it will take us back to an unstructured bandwidth again and we may momentarily lose control.  Consciousness starts to wake up in the solar plexus bandwidth but initially it is focusing just on self and identity however superb the intellect.

The challenge as we approach the heart center is to allow humility, equality, to relax our rigidity and control a bit and admit that we cannot do it all alone. In the corporate arena we may admit that we aren't superman or superwoman after all. We allow others equal space. When this bandwidth has run its course it cannot maintain itself but starts to melt the structures, roles and prisons. It eventually leaves us disconnected and we know something essential is missing and we open ourselves to gentleness and vulnerability, loosening and softening the structures we have created. Consideration of others enters and we learn to use our power and knowledge in a more responsible manner. The practice becomes surrender and letting go and in the letting go something greater enters.

Spiritual practice may enter and it helps us to soften. As we melt our own self-created prison, we soon learn that we cannot skip stages and find ourselves re-entering our lower bandwidths to heal fear and doubt. We practice embracing ourselves as we are, thus the heart slowly develops more courage and starts to open, trust in life’s magical unfolding can re-enter. We cannot take our fear and doubt into our bliss. 

Inspired by my own journey, study in esoteric philosophy, the ancient wisdom tradition, especially esoteric soul based healing and notes from a recent workshop with Jeddah Mali.