Soul returns & burns

Artist: Sari Komulainen / Micaela's GeneKeys / 70th birthday present

Seventy years of age, how did that happen? For the first time this feels different than other round numbers my mortal coil has reach in this life. It feels I am entering a time of distilling the essence of my core, what, my dear soul, are these later crone years about? By now I know, I am nothing without you. As you have been returning, embodying into your sacred temple, my personhood and body, with her likes and dislikes, her importance has diminished. I am a carrier of your splendour, important yes, but really only for the purpose of housing your radiant love & light.

You have been arriving, taking abode in me for a long time, consciously I’ve been aware of the process for some forty years. It all started, guided by my intuition around my 30^th birthday. I suspect Saturn, the great celestial teacher had his way, insisted with the wake-up calls. Sphere by sphere, layer by layer you landed and transformed me from the inside out. Sometimes it has been gentle, sometimes brutal and painful, all depending on how much I have resisted and/or put up a fight. Tension and resistance are your favourite tools as nothing comes about without them, life would be boring without striving and finding the inner courage to step outside our comfort zones. A question therefore at this threshold could be: “What is the resistance now, at seventy?” I shall sit with that.

As long as I am alive, I can continue asking the question: “who am I”. Know thyself is the deepest longing for a human being.  As a perspective or a point of view of the ONE, this question is forever dynamic, holistic and interconnected, inspiring consciousness as the capacity to know myself. We have free will, therefore the choice to explore is voluntary. The ONE explores itself through the myriads of perspectives of consciousnesses, and in that sea of ideas, ideals, thoughts, feelings and sensations mine are one. That is the premise for how you should read my blog.

In the beginning, when I had called upon you, because you do not come without an invitation, despite my call, I resisted. Typical Libra oscillation those early years, material worldly life vs. deepening spiritual life. Which would it be? This took a few decades at least. Your early dances with me were violent and painful sometimes, teaching me through tough love. I didn’t get, nor understand the intricacy, actually the genius design, of the holographic mirror effect, how my inner state of mind was reflected in my outer world of circumstances. How life offered ample occasions and opportunities to look at unconscious patterns or trauma arising from my shadow. I, like most of us, had to hit my head against the wall many times, repeating semi-automatically some unhealthy pattern, until it dawned on me, that I myself am the answer to any unresolved issue, unpleasant experience, perceived rejection and heart ache or any misfortune I experienced. Mid-life crisis, at the latest, is usually when this realization comes, if it’s to come.  Many times, I said “that’s enough”, leave me alone. When this happened, I filled my time with irrelevant distractions, soon to notice my error and like a wet dog returning to his/her master from rushed escapades, by some strange invisible hand I returned to the inner call. Deep down a belief grew stronger, that only you, my wiser higher Self & Soul could free me from the confusion and the sense of lostness I experienced in the earlier part of my life. Thankfully you insisted, you never left my side, despite my confusion. Your will and fire were so much stronger than the small will of my personhood, even if I tried, your force could not be distinguished. With each decade the flame grew stronger. Eventually the only thing to do was to surrender. Finally, even that is more than twenty years ago now, I said: “okey, I’ll listen to you now, I’ll listen to you 110 %”; I committed. That’s when your downpouring begun in earnest and with it the burning of the layers in the field of causal old dross. I had come to a cross-road of no-return, a kind of live and change or die moment. Faith was tested many times, as real alchemy is impersonal and does not really care about the alchemist her/himself, spirit just pours through its higher frequency with little regard for the pain it causes in the bodies.

In the beginning of this stage, I sought knowledge. I wanted to understand the Universe and my place in it. What was my true, divine nature? What is the ultimate truth of this Universe I’ve landed in? Why am I here, why did I come? Who am I? Gosh, I had so many questions. Even though the early years seemed chaotic in many ways, in hindsight I see a strange red thread weaving the tapestry, the hidden terma, treasures of continuous revelation in just the right pace I could absorb, deepening my understanding of soul-mystery. Slowly I was shown, or received hints, where The Great Work had been left off in some past life, what needed to be remembered and what integration and further revelation the soul intended to offer in this life time. I am in no illusion of having finished the job, only preparing for the next incarnation.  

We are all unique and may have high sense perceptions already inherent and developed from previous life-times. I have a very heightened psycho-kinaesthetic sensitivity throughout my bodies’ plural – physical, etheric, emotional, mental and spiritual. When the soul, at my request, started its downpouring, the burning sensation in my bodies were brutal. The most intense burning took altogether some fifteen years and still comes under the pressure of Solar activity and high velocity gamma rays. Each layer – this life, past lives, ancestral fields, entangled groups of national conditions, humanity as a whole etc. they all have their layers of dross, they all represent some pattern, which the soul has come to change, release and uplift. No wonder it is often called “the pealing of the onion” in ordinary parlance, coming to the core of our being takes some pealing.

I didn’t become a scholar or teacher in the perennial wisdom teachings this time – that had happened in a previous life time. Nevertheless, I studied the ageless wisdoms obsessively for years and years, there were things I had to remember. Slowly I learned, that this was a life of soul-infusion, of embodiment, of shadow work and alchemy, transmutation and transformation. I am in a female body, so understanding the sacred feminine and how the process differs in this structure became paramount.

I have come to believe that souls in women structures, are the balancers and custodians of the elements of earth and water, whereas souls in male structures were meant to be the custodian and balancer of fire and air. What I mean is, that we know too little as of yet about the deeper significance of gender and the custodianship role we are supposed to carry for the Earth and her kingdoms. We’ve had matriarchy and patriarchy, but no balanced expression yet. Both have to do their own specific service via the heart and the heart does not even start to open until a good portion of the individual alchemical purification work has been done. Both genders need an open heart, own inner feminine and masculine balance in order for the specific alchemical work to be successful. Service work, which is planetary in scope and therefore of benefit to the whole. This is a hypothesis of mine, so take it as such. Unfortunately, I am not very hopeful that such understanding would come any time soon, it hasn’t landed in esoteric or spiritual communities, they too have, to a large extent, been captured by the left brain and the patriarchal system.

Equal rights and opportunities do not mean sameness, too many women still have to adopt the strategy of strengthening their masculine side, suppressing their feminine side in order to “make it” in this world. If there are any archetypes missing in our current western culture, they would be the Nurturing Mother and the Wise Woman. Mothers have become workforce and older wise women are marginalized into oblivion. We’ve become anti-life.

Especially the western world is currently gender confused, childbirth is dropping rapidly and we are still very far from soul informed deeper balance or understanding of our custodianship role as Gaians. We continue raping and pillaging the planet, even in the latest left-brain example named the Green Deal. We are so clever and good at using our intellectual shrewdness to turn anything and everything into a profitmaking machine, more grabbing, more destroying of Mother Earth. We are moving from pumping oil to digging minerals – how is this in any way sustainable. And looking outside western culture, many still await the emancipation and freedom of women to pursue their own individuation enabling growth. Evolution is slow, that is the harsh fact of the matter.

In this life, I could not just read and study about God, Source and/or divinity; I actually had to do the work and allow the transformation. The knowledge and the wisdom seldom interest me, if it did not translate into a lived experience in my body-mind-soul-spirit temple. I became a plumber of sorts, plumbing the unconscious for blocked energies.

A lot of layers needed to be opened up in order to hear, in-between the mental chatter, the soul’s truer messages, those that echoed in my body, those that showed me where I still held on, where energy got stuck and free flow was somehow hampered.  Eventually the questions became clearer, who is behind my thoughts, who is the observer and what is that consciousness trying to show me. My thoughts were only stepping stones to a deeper presence, a deeper contemplation. In good and clear moments, I enter an “ocean of LOVE”, a perfect balanced poise of BEING with no thoughts whatsoever. One with everything, as if a radiating blessing sitting here on Earth. Throughout the years, entering this state of bliss has become easier, although it never comes on demand, only by surrender. And to be clear it is not only a transcendental experience, but very much present here with the mineral, plant and animal kingdoms. Here’s another hypothesis: when men find enlightenment, they often describe it as emptiness but when women find the same, for them it is an experience of fullness. We have had thousands of years of spiritual bypassing, just opening up our upper temples, transcending, reaching up to the heavens and therefore turning our backs on the equally divine life-forms here on Earth, no wonder matter and mother have been forgotten and only seen as resources.

The vastness of the human electromagnetic field humbles me. An energy of awe and reverence enters, but also layers of vulnerability are activated in the face of this huge vista of plasma light. It is like being surrounded and penetrated by the great Cosmic Mother, both inside and out. Tears rise up easily. “I love you” I tell the light and it responds with hues of violet, lavender, blue and magenta, really all colours of the rainbow, golden sometimes, filling my being with corresponding love energy, expanding me further. It loves me right back. If we just understood the holographic nature of our being, we receive what we put out, it is a reciprocal relationship, like a mirror. It is a paradox to simultaneously feel the inner vastness grow and the significance of personhood decrease into a no-body. A chamber of grace really, totally safe, totally loved in a benevolent Universe. Maybe that is why we are told in the Bible, that the meek shall inherit the Earth. You know with every fibre of your being that it is not about you!

It took years, decades to step into soul, become and identify as the soul, allowing it to take hold and lead the show, even play. I had to make space, let go of distractions, dedicate myself and watch personhood find its rightful place. Tune into the Tree of Life which I am, both Divine, Human and Gaian, all saturated with the sacred. Yes, I am also Gaian and so are you! Eden or paradise is nowhere else, it is right here and it is only here, in incarnated life, where the transformation and the transfiguration can be done. In his book Power vs Force, psychiatrist David R. Hawking proposes that we only need a few Christ-like or Buddha-like beings to counterbalance the frequencies of hundreds of thousands of humans. I’m doing my part, maybe counterbalancing a few thugs, knowing full well that we all belong to the one being, Anima Mundi, the soul of humanity.

My inner child is nowadays at ease, the pain is gone. She tells my soul: “you saw me, thank you”! Like me she is resting now, lower belly, waters and womb calm. The energy flows up and down, in and out without impediments in a dance weaving new imprint. Even though I age, it feels paradoxically as if I have become younger inside. The natural inner flow has brought about even greater sensitivity, a sense of beauty towards all relations in my surroundings, be they human, animal, plant or mineral – all vibrate within an energetic field of life more abundant. Beauty can be found everywhere, if beauty and balance resides within. A co-creative space in constant flow and movement.

The connection becomes stronger when I use my soft singing voice. Soul is as subtle as an intricate snow-flake, weaving her is a delicate matter. Just sounding vowels or doing overtone singing, the energy dances in the garden of life, with the elements, calling forth a purifying wind, sometimes a spark of fire, for more high frequency light to enters. The light knows no boundaries, it penetrates brick and stone likewise, it spins through me down into living Gaia, weaves like mushroom mycelia vast connections in the mineral kingdom, sings and flows with the waters of seas, lakes and river and grounds new energy, connecting with and between all kingdoms.

Gaia rises to meet me. She is my vast watery counterpart, source of joy and creativity, Paradise unknown. Through the years I’ve realised it is her I have come to serve, her divination and ascension. I am her daughter past-present and future. I now know my place, a light and anchor in her body. Water of Life has always been, and will always be the way new Life enters this Planet. She is sacred and the water holds the memory. She is currently in her own birthing process, together with the rest of the Solar System, shedding the old and birthing the new. We can join her, even assist her, or we can resist her. If we do the latter, her chaos may be destructive, but hopefully enough of humanity awakens to her sacred nature and act in responsible ways as the custodians of all LIFE.

The soul’s essence is LOVE. It has a fragrance of rose. I, the personhood, just need to move out of the way and she will come with her blessing. When presence is present this love flows unimpeded uplifting life around.

I didn’t get here without sorrow and pain, I had to look at the contrast of the shadow, heal, uplift and transmute. It too wants to be seen, but hides, sometimes deeply in the unconscious. It is after all at the bottom of the compost heap, where the pearl of great adoration can be found. Our shadow, if we choose to see it in a new way, is there to bring awakening and revelation. It serves us, two sides of the same coin – light & dark. We all have them in equal measure and we all have to befriend and integrate our shadow. Here I have noticed another difference between men and women. Men seem to want to fight and defeat the dragon, a warrior hero approach, whereas women tend to melt, greet, befriend and integrate the dragon. Maybe it is our life-giving watery womb that instinctively knows the dragon is her child as well, and who would want to kill their child?

The more I expanded the more subtle the shadow becomes. It showed its entanglements of ancestral patterns in fields of connection going back many, many generations, the soul IS a group being, knows no separation and all is absolutely interconnected.

Above picture: all the wombs and mothers in my paternal line going back to 13th century Novgorod, current Russia. In aristocracy the maternal line has been shunned and suppressed. My attempt to make these women visible and thank them as part of ancestral healing work.

The shadow has a kind of protective aspect, until we are ready to fully see and feel it. Our defences, after all, were lifesaving at some point and they deserve our respect. The contrast polishes our edges and teaches us humbleness. It is a natural part of life; therefore no one can judge, as each of us are so utterly individual, with inner entanglements we cannot see in the other, it is hard enough to see our own. So much is hidden, so many stories untold, so many layers of unforgiving and hardening.

Meet me there, writes Rumi, in the field of forgiveness. Don’t go back to sleep.

“Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and right doing,
there is a field. I’ll meet you there.
When the soul lies down in that grass,
the world is too full to talk about.
Ideas, language, even the phrase “each other”
doesn’t make any sense.
The breeze at dawn has secrets to tell you.
Don’t go back to sleep.
You must ask for what you really want.
Don’t go back to sleep.
People are going back and forth across the doorsill
where the two worlds touch.
The door is round and open.
Don’t go back to sleep.”

Soul- infusion invites forgiveness, there is no avoiding it. She is LOVE and when she enters there is only the way of reconciliation. When the dross is burnt away, nothing else, but LOVE remains.

The hardest may be to forgive ourselves, our choices or non-choices, our body, emotions and thoughts, our organs, cells, molecules, atoms, blood stream, absolutely everything about ourselves. Forgive until all blocks release and flow back into our infinite heart, total acceptance is required. Only LOVE within can flow out as a blessing. The process of melting and surrendering has been a companion for decades, yet still I can catch myself criticizing myself for something.

Everything is relational, we constantly weave relations and grow when relations spark either as a trigger or as a love-spark. We are mirrors and need other mirrors to show us who we are. Our shadow especially loves close relations, as they give it an opportunity to be seen.  I get to observe and reflect upon my own drama. The soul rejoices when this game of life is revealed and allows her wisdom to flow. When something truly gets resolved in all frequences and dimensions it does not need to show itself anymore, it is done and vanishes for good. Initially we understand these relations as only those we have within the human kingdom, but as our field expands it will include all kingdoms of nature as well as soul tribes, inner Ashrams and the Anima Mundi, the Soul of the World. Soul thrives in all of them and we are not separate, although most of humanity still seems to think so.

The souls greatest yearning is to inhabit all corners of my inner Universe and the more I surrender the more my personhood knows it knows nothing without soul and spirit. Be irresistible my soul, intoxicate me is my prayer.

 

This text originated from the data-collection, intuitive process with friends Harriet Fagerholm and Kaisa Peltola. We spent an afternoon facilitated by Harriet with her writing/data collection process. In an intuitive manner we explored areas of: body, thoughts, feelings, needs, inner child, painting/drawing, movement, sound, nature/Gaia, physical environment, love, shadow, sorrow, forgiveness/reconciliation, relations, hearts yearning, dream, will and actions.

 

 

 

Geared up to open human hearts

  Role of the Findhorn Foundation in consciousness evolution, soul infusion and the unfodling of the love petals of the soul

(this post is a bit long - but hey - so is the souls path)

My journey with the Findhorn Foundation (FF), a spiritual, ecological and holistic centre in Northern Scotland started some 12 years ago. The past 7 years I lived there and served this centre.

 Colourful greeting from Findhorn, made by Yasko Takahashi

As the heading says I think the Findhorn Foundation and its community is really here to help unfold and support the opening of the human heart chakra. It is good to have an idea what the greater purpose of Findhorn in the bigger scheme of consciousness evolution might be, therefore I have expanded a little my own inquiry. This is both based on my own experience of how my own heart and soul have remembered and opened as well as my study in esoteric philosophy. These teachings are esoteric (hidden) to a large extent because they teach about the subtle, unseen realities behind all forms and one seldom pays attention to this invisible world until the heart has started its delicate unfolding.

Many of us may agree that creation, source, existence itself thrives on diversity and wants to explore and express itself through life in a multitude of life-forms including the human life-form. We can certainly see this principle at work at Findhorn, in only 53 years this community has achieved a lot and there does not seem to be an end to the expressive creativity that flourishes here – HURRAY!

“Nature itself holds the clue to the Divine. In its myriad forms the great potentiality of being is poured out, streaming from the womb of potentiality, exploding into act. A kind of meta-physical combustion seems to be working in the fabric of things, in a surge of incipient energy breaking out of its bounds of nuclear forms and disappearing into the Beyond” Bill Everson/poet 

Usually people seek out Findhorn, often guided by their soul, when they have somehow exhausted their ambition and ego-centred expression or are just about to do this even though they don’t  quite know it yet and are waking up to the fact that there is more to life. Alternatively they are eco-aware young or older people who have come to learn about sustainable, holistic living, perma-culture and eco-design. Often in the course of their time within the field of Finhorn they find the spiritual aspect, if they did not have that before and they find the path to the heart. We should not exhaust our energy in conversations about what was the hen and what was the egg – what came first, spirituality or eco. It doesn’t really matter, what is important is that the heart chakra opens – either route – Findhorn would have done its job.

Way back, in early 70ties, it was decided that Findhorn should become a “rainbow centre”, welcoming all. This set the tone, vibration and field of what spirit, i.e. the inner side of life, wanted to unfold through this intentional community. Findhorn Foundation did not become the exclusive initiatory mystery school but rather an inclusive and expansive Aquarian demonstration centre of unfolding consciousness and through this serving the world. Findhorn has also been described as a centre where the soul incarnates more fully into the personality and this is directly related to the opening of the heart chakra.

When the human heart opens it IS the bridge to the spiritual realms and allows the creativity of soul-expression through – a soul-expression which holds both the abundance and the potentiality Bill Everson writes so beautifully about. It is naturally holistic, universal, thinks ecologically and opens to the understanding of interdependence and the rights of all life-forms, both seen and unseen to live in harmony on this planet. What also tends to happen is the development of some degree of group-consciousness. This is all in the nature of the soul.

The human heart is sealed and closed protecting the weary traveller, i.e. the soul until a time when there is readiness, a fertile ground to allow its tender opening. As a place and energy field Findhorn and community represent a fertile ground where a wonderfully safe space is created for this unfolding to happen. In any individual life, in any soul journey, this is a momentous moment because possibly for the first time the “downward gazing soul” has caught the attention of the personality in incarnation. Or even if it has happened before in a previous lives, each life has to come to a point of remembering as we tend to drop down into amnesia when we incarnate.

The love people sense here, the acceptance they experience paves the way to a more soul-full life, and soul-full lives expresses themselves in diversity, creativity, expansiveness, joy and abundance. An open heart enables source to come through as source expressing itself, its unique contribution through each and every one of us in this dimensional realm. We all have a unique divine blueprint, a gift to the world. May Findhorn therefore continue and own even more this process of opening the human hearts so that all expressions spread out like the seeds from a sunflower – which was I believe one of Eileen Caddy's guidance (Eileen was one of the founders of this centre of Love & Light). This to me is our world work.

 Eileen Caddy, Peter Caddy and Dorothy Maclean with David Spangler (left)

What does esoteric philosophy teach about how the human heart opens – what are some of the stages?

Naturally this is a process that spans over many incarnations. Opening of the human heart is a long process of a soul unfolding according to the esoteric philosophy traditions. In each life we have to remember were we left of before and what actually constitutes an expansion for us and life will lead us to this.

I’ll try and present this complex unfolding (you are a whole Universe so how could it be simple) to you in a simplified nut-shell version so that my point of why I think Findhorn is especially geared up to support this process becomes clearer and how Findhorn contribute to the bigger picture of our ONE HUMANITY.

Why this is relevant in our current time and why the Findhorn impulse came through when it did in the 60ties is also part of the picture. What got seeded in the 60ties is meant to flower now. In our process of moving from the Piscean age to the Aquarian age (a 150 year transition in itself) a new collective consciousness is being birthed. We see this all over the world in the grass-root movements and a tremendous spiritual awakening taking place. We move from the Kali Yoga (age of darkness) to the Satya Yuga (age of light) and the opening of the human heart is part of this process and represents a movement into greater coherency with the evolutionary process. Many of us wanted to be here on earth at this time as it represents a giant opportunity for the soul to evolve. One result of the work at Findhorn is the tens of thousands of people around the world who have been touched by the impulse here and are doing their contribution towards a more sustainable, holistic life-style. Findhorn has turned out to be a great incubator of new ideas, from Eco-Village Network, Gaia Education and recently the New Story Movement just to mention a few.

The Soul is often referred to as a Lotus; this is just to give it a picture we can relate to. What the different stages of the Soul Lotus really refer to are different energy streams that expand our consciousness through numerous life times. The soul is said to have 9 major petals/energy streams and the unfolding is not a linear process but one of synthesizing and attuning to different levels of consciousness, yet it also follows a certain sequence. These 9 soul petals are divided into three Knowledge Petals, three Love Petals and three Sacrifice Petals. Here sacrifice refers to the original meaning of the word which is “to make holy”. Each of these categories are divide into Knowledge/Knowledge – Knowledge/Love and Knowledge/Sacrifice and Love/Knowledge – Love/Love and Love/Sacrifice and finally in the last tier into Sacrifice/Knowledge – Sacrifice/Love and Sacrifice/Sacrifice. When we come to this last stage we have our final enlightenment immersion into non-dual Oneness. Remembering of that which we truly are and along the way we would have had minor enlightenment experiences and peak experiences before, but at the last stage we merge permanently into Oneness, mount the cardinal cross in the heavens and resurrect (to use Christian terminology). The petals are related to the elements, i.e. first we deal with EARTH in the Knowledge Petals, then WATER in the Love Petals and lastly FIRE in the Sacrifice Petals, the element of AIR is the carrier of all.

Some characteristics of the Petals

I will not start at the beginning but from the last Knowledge Petal, i.e. Knowledge/Sacrifice (3) to give you a sense of the flow.

During the later stages of the Knowledge Petal (P3) individual uniqueness is still not present, it is suppressed and we are the uniform, blend with the whole, don’t stand up for ourselves, we conform. We make best of our circumstances and there a lot of – “oh, let’s not think, or talk about that” – lots of unspoken taboos. Because the last petal in this first tier is a Sacrifice petal we “make” our emotions behave to do our job and we may wreck our backs working 14 hour days. You may say “I must do this even if it kills me”. It’s the stage of modern slavery, enforced servitude. Natural joy has disappeared. Here we had in the recent past the Industrial Revolution and current day Globalisation which drives work to where low paid work forces are available. These can be nice good people, constructive members of society. But they are often unhappy and wonder at the end of their lives was it worth it. We still have the whole military and most of the economic spheres here and we rely very strongly on our lower mind, but we are not the observer of the mind and we are definitely not very much in touch with our emotions. In the chakras there is a focus in the solar plexus centre, sacral centre and base. All knowledge petals are related to the element EARTH.

LOVE

The Love Petals (P4), related to the WATER element, start to unfold when we have exhausted the previous stage and seek conscious balancing of pairs of opposites and respond to the Law of Attraction and Repulsion. In the first Love/Knowledge stage psychology begins, we start sensing something higher, something immanent and we start to comprehend causes. We basically move from the Hall of Ignorance to the Hall of Learning. The inner observer starts to emerge and we seek harmony between the opposites, recognizing that both are needed and we seek reconciliation. Stillness enters and we start to look within. This is the phase were great work of healing takes place on the feeling level, feeling the pain, healing it by feeling it. A lot of people visit therapists when this petal has started to activate. This is higher knowledge applied through love, yet it is not yet soul love. Introversion becomes possible. We are paying attention to our feelings and we give attention to our subtle bodies for the first time. A lot of mending of the incongruence’s between a person’s inner self and a person’s outer self takes place and it brings about authenticity. 

The “downward gazing” soul notices us for the first time and starts to pay attention to the call that comes from the personality, even though only fleetingly. We are beginning to discriminate between mind and emotion, a lot of self-examination, memory and recalling patterns. All planes are included: physical, astral/emotional and mental. The Higher Self is in the process of being born to consciousness. This is the world of the personality as a whole and its relation to itself as an integrating something to the soul (higher source within). We are verging towards the world of meaning and starting to understand cause and effect. This is the stage of becoming distinct, of individuation and conscious self-betterment. We want to improve life and the eyes begin to focus upon self....about being our own star....The Ageless Wisdoms call these Lotuses of Integration, Lotuses of Progression, Lotuses of Ingathering, Lotuses of Harmonization, Lotuses of Fusion, Lotuses of Progressive Centralization. We recognize the rights of others and we do not do physical damage to others. Here we have the average really good man/woman who shows some measure of love.

In our chakra system we integrate the lower three chakras and the opening of the heart begins, the throat centre also starts to express itself as it is the clearing house of the integrating personality, yet the solar plexus still dominates, it is the furnace of feelings and this is a very watery (emotional) tier. There is a tiny bit of activity in the head centre and some initial activity in the Ajna centre. We are self-guiding, self-reflecting and self-directing and aspiration has started. The light is seen through the waters and we start to move from pure materialism to well-being and change from outer values to inner values. Some altruism may come in and we become somewhat sensitive to the group. We are getting our act together and we start to question more. We can “taste” the inner Sun and are looking towards the light but we are still in the separate prison of our own house. Integration is really about withdrawing your projections, but we are often unconscious of the triggers causing our projections.

The next petal to open is the Love/Love (P5) which comes about through the process of gradually transmuting the love of the subjective nature or of the Self within turning our attention to the love of the REAL, higher intelligence LOVE.  We are still in the watery realms therefore fire by friction, which started in the previous petal, continues. Solar Fire is first realized in this petal as we aspire more consciously towards the soul. We start meditating and want consciously to build the connection and relationship (anthaskarana or Rainbow Bridge) to the soul. We strive to unite mind and heart and we will eventually pass the point of no return. The real task here is to achieve soul contact and our mental body starts to be affected by the souls down flow, especially in the later part of this petal. The soul is felt as a higher power and we reorient ourselves. We die to being content with expressing merely as a dominant personality. We are still in the Hall of Learning but we have intimations of what it might be like in the Hall of Wisdom. The soul shines in the Hall of Wisdom and it begins here under the Sun in the fifth petal, often with the influence of Leo strong in our chart. We actually touch a Higher Power. We enter the world of meaning, interpreting patterns and the place of anything within the wholeness. The path of pure ambition has shown its insufficiency and we are getting off the centre of our own stage. Here the path of aspiration becomes even stronger. When this tier has started to open we actually try to do something for the evolution and helping others. This is the stage of creative expression of mentality and merging of lower mind and higher mind, the heart continues to open. This fifth petal already has a good portion of light and shines its brilliance in dark places and this light is not kept under the bushel, these people are often seen. In the teachings they are called the Points of Fiery Excellence, are highly magnetic, evolved, creative and altruistic world aspirants, possibly writers, artists, thinkers etc.  Some mysticism comes in and we leave the lesser Sun to move towards the Real Sun (i.e. the Spiritual Sun). Downfall here can be pride, arrogance and fame which comes too early – the ego falls and the heart emerges powerfully. Later some humility arises from humiliation. There is a strong sense of purpose and we lift our energies from the solar plexus to the heart consciously. The transmutation of our emotional nature really starts here. The soul is now the object of our attention. This is the first solar (Sun) petal, the personality becomes radiant. This petal has two stages: “I am That” and “I am That, the Soul”. We are still selfish; but it has turned to fulfilling our own soul purpose. Here the esoteric philosophy point out that a little knowledge can be a dangerous thing as there is risk of aggrandizement and delusion.

Our throat centre represents the personality and the heart centre the soul. The head centres are coming into effect and we move slowly from self-love, to soul-love towards group love. Real group consciousness without asking much in return for the separate self does not start until the 7^th petal. In this 5^th petal imagination develops; emotional idealism and discrimination as well as spiritual discernment. There is revelation of beauty and of inner quality, a place to reveal and download your soul talent; we contact our own genius – our Higher Self. Once the personality is satiated you can make progress. This is a very rich petal where many things are against each other and merge with each other; intellectual, artistic and heart person.  We are turning from ambition to aspiration and getting the ideal of service. We may have the “born again” experience and we are at the midway point of the BRIDGE, i.e. heart. It is a very important petal with a lot of decisiveness and reorientation. Here we have the first determined orientation toward the inner God. This is the beginning of humility; foundation of compassion later. Often we have to recapitulate some of the previous petals.

In the Love/Sacrifice (P6) petal a human being tries to consciously give up his/her own desires for the sake of his/her group. The motivation is still somewhat blind and still coloured by the desire for a return of that which is given and love from those he/she seeks to serve, but it is of much higher order than the blind sacrifice (P3) to which a man/woman is driven by circumstances in the earlier unfoldment. Here the central ring of the soul lotus comes into full unfoldment and the heart centre of the monad (pure spirit) is first seen. In this philosophy the soul itself is seen as an intermediary between spirit and matter. The mutable cross in astrology ends here and we step onto the fixed cross. The person has integrated his/her emotional nature, mind and heart have come together, but is still not fully and completely inspired by soul light, yet continuing to receive more of the energy of the soul.

We are very hard on ourselves in this petal; critique our personality expression as we try to be the true server. It is an important decision point, often ruled by Libra. We have by now become good at meditation, reaching and communing with the soul on a regular basis and when we are willing to be tested we can say we are truly on the Path. We prepare for the entrance to the Hall of Wisdom. We are still in the World of Meaning were we learn to know the causes behind effects and the place of any function in the larger context. We arrive at spiritual discernment when we take the first Initiation (Birth of the Christ Light or Buddha Nature in the Human Heart) at the lowest level of the causal body and this can really only happen when we have started to unfold the Sacrifice tier. Here we undertake a lot of spiritual reading, studying all things as symbols which reveal spiritual causes. There is more conscious testing brought about by Pluto (brings “stuff” up) and Vulcan (the blacksmith of the heavens who hammers your aura until it is clean) – they will test you! Basically bad stuff comes up and good stuff comes down. This is the stage called “entering the cave” – the Hermit in Tarot – the cave is the cave of Initiation, which means a huge expansion of consciousness, a quantum leap.

Now we want to serve rather than require; we are tired of the many forms of the personality and are looking more and more toward the soul’s own form. We enter the playground of the higher mind, i.e. we want to know about the plane on which the soul is found. We are trying to give up our own desires for the sake of the group we serve, but are still expecting rewards. These Lotuses are called Radiant Lotuses, Lotuses of Purification, Lotuses of Adjustment, Lotuses of Reflection, Lotuses of Discrimination and Lotuses in the Cave. We are spiritually pregnant and we make corrections and adjustments, discriminating between soul and personality. We go silent and talk less as we are yearning for the Kingdom of God. (Much later we fly out of the cave with our wings open at the fourth Initiation, Petal 9). Here we have the budding mystic, the sensitive struggling and longing for illumination of the soul. A mystic proceeds on the heart line, whereas an occultist proceeds on the wisdom line, but there is no real wisdom without heart so an occultist who is able to work consciously with energies and forces is not really allowed to do so until the heart is open. There is the intensity of feeling in the presence of God – of the numinous. This is the stage of adaptation, discipline, training, correcting, house-cleaning, discarding rubbish and attempting to respond to group need. There is something more important than the “I am” – and we do it consciously.

Some of the head centres have opened and the synthesising Ajna centre is important as we continue to integrate. There is a vision of the future and a guiding direction. When the portal of initiation opens the seven head centres must awaken because we are preparing for the seventh petal and the first Initiation.  Mostly we have normal use of the lower centres, heart, throat, Ajna opening, four centres in the head open and the Alta Major centre at the back of our head starts to open. At the first Initiation we have 25 % control, i.e. 25 % of our atoms in our body carry a higher light. We have become more objective about ourselves. We are still motivated by desire but now it is the desire for the return. There may be a phase of self-criticism, a feeling of unworthiness before the Higher Power. The risk here is to lose touch with the lower centres and therefore lose touch with Earth; denial of the lower can enter - a denial really of the Divine Mother as we yearn to ascend. This is a big service petal and we are working for others, even if little selfish at times. But as we will later learn, we cannot ascend to the Father without taking the Mother with us, only thus can the great marriage of the feminine and masculine aspects of ourselves take place. This sacred marriage happens in the heart.

We ask “What is my motive?” We have learned to control our astral nature and are intelligently participating in world affairs. It is a crisis of gestation. Before every Initiation there is a crisis of the Burning Ground. This means that the soul energy burns the dross in our field of numerous incarnations. Remember that this field is an interpenetrating auric field which touches us deep all the way to our physicality. We consist of both elemental and deva substance. When the soul purifies us, eventually all elemental essence in the soul field which has been distorted during previous lives comes to be purified in the dark womb of the feminine (our body, our Earth). This continues with greater intensity in the Sacrifice Petals until our liberation.

Love/Sacrifice is about everyday life, everyday life becomes divine, beginning to transform everyday life into something more numinous.... God is here too we realize. There is an alignment with the soul in everyday life, a very practical approach to divinity. There are many pains as it is difficult to acquire what you desire, i.e. soul-infusion and purification. Here we discriminate between need and want and through detachment wisdom grows.

Lots of people in religious/spiritual orders/centres and in monasteries are here, making pilgrimages, going far to find the soul in the outer world – the guru/ashram – yet the soul is not the same as the outer teacher. We become more introverted with some self-centredness possible, we may say: “I am going to serve the world but it is hard to manifest”. We are giving but still wanting something in return. Not until the Fourth Initiation do we get to a point where we do not want anything in return. We are still nailed to the Fixed Cross and some demonstration is needed, body is more or less under control and heart is opening more. We have to kneel to take the first Initiation, possible loss of material things (Capricorn – the mountain of Initiation).

In the three following Sacrifice petals, which represent the Initiatory Path and where the element FIRE with its electric fire dominates the First Initiation can be confirmed. Maybe in another text I will write about them, but for now I wanted to concentrate on the Love Petals and the HEART.

As we see the unfolding of the heart is a long, long process and this is, I believe, what Findhorn is here to serve, enhance and enable. How these awakened hearts express their unique gifts in the world is the contribution.

PS! Where the esoteric philosophy and the non-dual approach, which is so popular today, differ is important to understand. The non-dual says that you are already what you are seeking, i.e. the soul, therefore you are perfect. Esoteric philosophy agrees but recognizes that the perfect soul, or divine blueprint, cannot fully express itself through the personality and is in itself evolving. Perfect in its potentiality, but imperfect in its capacity to express itself successfully through the personality in order to serve and make an uplifting contribution. Without understanding, the non-dual approach can become a trap or a diversion, a potential avoidance of the actual work to be undertaken, i.e. clearing up our portion of the collective unconscious and bringing in more love and light. This is honouring the “job description” of every awakened soul.

love....Micaela