A Word of Caution for the Conscientious

The Oxford Dictionary (Web), defines the word Conscientious as follows: 

 

Conscientious - adjective

1(Of a person) wishing to do what is right, especially to do one’s work or duty well and thoroughly: a conscientious and hardworking clerk

2Relating to a person’s conscience: the act does not provide exemption from service on the basis of personal conscientious beliefs

Origin (for those who are curious):  early 17th century: from French consciencieux, from Medieval Latin conscientiosus, from Latin conscientia (see conscience).

Derivatives:

·      Conscientiously – adverb

·      Conscientiousness - noun 

Not every human being on the planet has a well-developed Conscientiousness.  For those who have a well-developed Conscientiousness or an even deeper sense, empathy, those lacking conscience can either unintentionally or intentionally exploit your Conscientiousness.  If you’ve ever given this any thought, you may have already come to this conclusion.  An interesting thought to me is how we typically deal with the ensuing conflict when we encounter individuals out of sync with our own level of Conscientiousness.  When we have a fairly well-developed sense of Conscientiousness, we may hold this mistaken belief that if we are Conscientious, that others are or should be as well.  Not so.  As we live our lives dealing with the conflict of our beliefs and the Truth of reality in the absence of understanding, we may become quite conflicted.  This conflict within us may have us wishing, “If only this person did this” or maybe, “If only that person would just do that, then I could or would be happy, fine or content.”  This is where we do ourselves a great disservice in a number of ways.  I’d like to count them for you because I think (notice I did not say “believe”) with greater understanding we can expand our awareness and compassion.  These two things are important to our well-being in ways that are worth understanding.

The Ways:

1.     Just because a thought comes from within our own heads, it does not make it true.  Given this, our beliefs would have us think that everyone should be conscientious but the truth is, they are not.

2.     Every person on this Earth has some things in common and many things uncommon in terms of experience, psychology, and this list, well, is endless.

3.     If we walked through our lives hanging our only capability of finding happiness on the behavior of others in accord with the way we might behave, we’re headed for a life of pure anxiety, anger, sadness and even depression.

4.     If you are conscientious or even empathic, you may positively project that onto others believing they are what they are not which may set you up, again, for an uncomfortable emotional fall.

Now, considering all of the above and it is really a list that could go on into eternity, it might seem a reasonable approach to become very fearful and distrusting of others.  That is certainly an option but how would taking that approach support a true sense of well-being for you?  I’ll say that it is a fairly reasonable approach to life if you’ve experienced many disappointments through interactions with your fellow human beings (truly your brothers and sisters).  However, I suggest to you there is yet a better way.  That way or path is the path of understanding, acceptance, forgiveness and compassion.  When you realize that we may extend from the same Source in origin but that our consciousness diverges based on our individuation and focus here in 3^rd dimensional reality, you come to understand that every one may operate similarly at some basic levels of maybe biology or psychology but we all operate very differently spiritually or metaphysically speaking.

That fact, that we may operate differently, is beautiful and perfect even if we learn the truth painfully at times.  We learn the most from others in some very interesting ways.  Let me explain to you a little bit of a theory I have about malware, meaning in the context of this article the emotionally and energetically charged beliefs in our mostly unconscious memories.  I’ll break it down in summary to help explain:

• We have all had some form of experience while in a fragile state of mind.  Perhaps it was while we were very young and just learning to work within the confines of this world.  Maybe the state occurred later in life.

• That experience may have created in you a belief that was either negative about you or about the inhabitants of or even your own existence in this world.

• Depending on the depth and severity of the thoughts generating emotion resulting in an energetic charge attached to the belief (whether true or not), that emotionally charged belief was stored in your memory.

• This emotionally and energetically charged belief stored as an unconscious memory changed the way you operated in this world.  In a way, it changed the way you operate within the confines of conscious awareness in this life.

• Any belief that formed around wounding will in time move to the level of consciousness beneath the awake and aware state.  Dr. Sigmund Freud referred to this consciousness as latent consciousness (meaning that which is unconscious with the possibility of rising to consciousness).  The memory of the belief and the emotional and energetic charge attached to it will still be active in terms of how your thought processes work but since the original belief has drifted below aware consciousness, you are no longer consciously aware of it.

• The amazing minds and physical forms that we hold will always seek a state of homeostasis (study biology and learn some amazing things).

• If you have an emotionally and energetically charged belief stored in your unconscious memory, you will seek to heal it through the interactions with people in this world or situations that will brush that emotionally and energetically charged belief in the form of a trigger.

• When you become triggered, you may be acting from the basis of a belief that was not true or that you didn’t even know existed.  When in a triggered state, you may even wonder, “Why am I reacting like this?” or “Why do I feel like this?

• Until you find your emotional and energetically charged beliefs stored in the level of consciousness below your awareness, you will continually be surrounded by people and situations that will trigger you.

• This process, while it may sound complex or even far-fetched for some, is actually quite perfect and amazing.  It is more evidence of our innate ability to heal ourselves and to do so individually and perfectly for each of us.  In a sense, we all have some form of malware that we are unconsciously seeking to heal.  This may create the various differentiations between our levels of conscientiousness as we live our days on planet Earth.

Consider this, if you will.  If you are a Conscientious individual, you can think about how others may feel before you act.  You have developed a very good thinking simulation process whereby your mind can rapidly take in lots of data and information, consider the feelings and situations of others and then act in ways that coincide with what you feel deep within is the right way to act.  But think about it for just a moment, why are you conscientious?  Are you just a very aware person or have you had to learn to be 3 steps ahead of others in order to protect yourself emotionally?  Both are perfectly fine and can actually be exactly the same but regardless, in a world where not everyone operates at the same level, Conscientious individuals need to exercise caution.  I say they need to exercise caution because those that are not Conscientious and who may even completely lack any scruples at all due to their own Life Lesson Plan, may exploit you.

So, how do you keep from being exploited or how do you prevent your own disappointment when people don’t behave kindly or maybe as considerately or gently as you do or would do?  There is an easy answer and a difficult answer.  The easy answer is by merely understanding that every one here in this Earth School, or simply the citizens of planet Earth, all operate at different levels of consciousness, have different emotionally and energetically charged beliefs (triggers) and will just act differently than you.  As for the difficult answer, well, you need to step way back and maybe go deeply within perhaps reaching for the metaphysical and spiritual perspectives to consider why we might be here at varying and different levels to begin with.  Consider that you may have come here for the opportunity to learn something.  Maybe that something was a challenging emotional existence fraught with tough life lessons.  What if your lesson plan was to learn to transcend your own triggers by learning to understand, love and hold compassion for the difficult path that every one here must take?  What if you are here to heal the wounds you planned to take on and so you find conflict where ever it is that you go not to wreck your world but to help you learn in better and more long-lasting ways?

The Caution for the Conscientious is to make sure you are aware in your thoughts that all here are learning and in different grades (and importantly, that no one grade or level is better than the other – just, perhaps, different).  Because we are all learning at different levels and in different ways, you must discover what it is you are learning from your own Conscientiousness.  Being Conscientious is wonderful and a great advantage as well as a wonderful way to learn life lessons.  It has beautiful rewards.  But if you hold the expectation that everyone should be as you are, you may be greatly disappointed.  Often times the conflict we think is coming at us from outside of us is actually coming from within us.  Taking a great leap into the metaphysical and spiritual perspective for a moment, we are creating what we experience whether we are consciously aware of it or not.  We will either continue to suffer the processes of our learning or we will learn and rise above.  Through awareness you can exercise caution in your thoughts, caution in your expectations and caution in your own behavior.  You can set boundaries within which you operate but realize those not on your path may crush them, or attempt to.  Understand that some people just can’t know what they don’t know and so will behave as they do until they learn.  You can appoint yourself their personal teacher if you want or you can simply step off of such battlefields without engaging in conflict.  You have free will and you will gain what you came here for.

This is a lot of food for thought, I realize.  If anything, my sincere desire is to paint a picture to illuminate some of the darker perspectives we may hold.  My intent is to open people up to the idea that what they think is True may be the biggest illusion they’ve ever held and all of this--existence, could easily be a simple, maddening or extraordinary dream.  I deeply appreciate all paths of learning and realize that the extent of my free will ends at these thoughts.  I share them for the purpose of presenting an alternative perspective that may cause individuals to think, feel and understand the importance of their existence here so that they may live with an increasing sense of ever unfolding well-being.  

 Rev. J.L. Harter, PhD, M.Msc., B.Msc., Author, Blogger, and Spiritual Counselor, Editor of the JMCC.  See Bio section for more information.

© 2014 Rev. J.L. Harter, PhD (photo/words)

So How Do We Make Peace With Our Past?

One patient step at a time.  There are a few roadblocks that get in the way of our healing.  At the top of the list; impatience and fear.  Our culture promotes instant gratification and if one doesn’t see immediate progress they often give up.  In addition, many are afraid to look at their past hurts thinking they will relive the intense pain all over again.  Often, the monumental pain is created in our minds rather than the reality of facing old hurts.

Remember, old pain is exactly that.  It is in the past.  When we revisit it we return as a guardian rather than a lost child.  As a therapist, I often will take my clients by the hand (figuratively) and guide them into the old experience.  As we meet the past pain we both nurture the inner child, reminding him that the pain has served its purpose and he can now move on.  The unconscious mind internalizes this process and then becomes ready for change.

We affect change by recognizing whatever difficulties we survived in our past had a purpose in creating who we are today.  Through every painful act, we realized we had more strength than we imagined, our resiliency increased, we became wiser, and we developed a keener sense of intuition.  All was not lost in that deep dark tunnel, rather, if used appropriately, your light continues to shine brighter with each brave step toward healing.

Once we recognize the purpose and meaning of the “dark night of the soul“, we are better able to give service and help others in their time of need.  Another avenue to healing.  Who knows better the compassion required in helping others than someone who has been through it?  Gather your passion and use it to serve others.  In time, you will realize you are serving yourself in healing as well.

Take time to meditate, sit in the quiet, allow yourself to just BE.  Visualize the existence you know was meant for you.  Enter a peaceful picture in your mind’s eye.  Notice the image before you and connect your body, mind and soul to its essence.  In time, any trauma you experienced will be replaced with healthy positivism in your life.

Continued support with a therapist, friends and family are important in laying the foundation for healing.  You will know when you are ready to fly.  Take your time, and think about how long it took for you to get to this place.  Be patient with yourself and time.  Time does heal all wounds but it is the digging that cleans out the old dirt to stave off chronic infection.

Visit that innocent child and give her a chance to live again.  Peace will prevail.

*Excerpt from Living, Loving & Unlearning: A therapist’s guide to healing and living authentically from the inside out.

http://www.cynthiabrennen.com

 Cynthia Brennen, LMSW, Contributor, Author.  Please see Bio section for additional information.

© 2014 Cynthia Brennen, LMSW

                                       

The Intuitive Language of Feeling

From my book, Solving for X, in Chapter 5 – Considerations, I’ve included some information about how to use the body’s language to begin to understand the truth of a situation or encounter we face.  The body speaks a language we are not taught to readily understand.  We intuitively know but until we turn up the volume a little bit on the wavelengths you are receiving, you won’t hear the message or understand it when it comes to you. 

We have so very much to consider if we are even remotely interested in the patterns and themes that are messages to us from us about what it is we are working on in this lifetime and attempting to discern our life’s purpose.  As you’re living the day to day, you can’t really see the messages coming to you about your own lesson plan until you know they are coming and learn to spot them as they occur.  Nothing is truly ever hidden.  It only seems to be.  That’s part of the fun of this enigma of living life.  It’s like walking around in a maze and all you see is this turn or that turn without at all having any ability to grasp the whole of the experience you are having or potentially, that which you are truly attempting to transcend in terms of lessons.  There are several ways to get through the maze such as trial and error, finding and trusting your internal intuitive guidance system once you’ve learned its language or, you can rise above the ‘maze’ a little and begin to see the corridors, openings and dead ends with a little more clarity.

I’m going to go into each of these three processes I mentioned to give you an idea about how each works and how understanding them can help you understand your messages, life plans and that which you most intended to learn.  Keep in mind that these three processes can work in stages, separate and apart or jumbled together.  It doesn’t really matter the order but that you recognize how they operate.  These are just a few ways that are most obvious and there can be more.  But, let’s start with a few and see where that takes us, shall we?

Trial and Error Process

As we are unconsciously aware of our existence, we move through the trial and error process. In a way, going back to the Zombie Apocalypse, we are living like zombies until we begin to understand a little more about who and what we are as well as how life works.  But, this trial and error process…it is about helping to wake us up here in this beautiful dream of Life on Earth.  As we work through this state, we keep trying the same things, meeting the same kinds of people and trying to perform the same activities over and over again with the same results.  Before we realize it, we keep ending up with the same challenges, the same disappointments or if you’re really in tune with All that Is, perhaps you are humming right along perfectly successful in life.  The trial and error process is likely how most of us operate unconsciously creating our lessons as we go.

This is an effective process so long as you at some point learn to do one thing.  That one thing is learning to identify the patterns and themes emerging in your life and discerning whether or not they are bringing you what you truly want and need or if they just seem to keep bringing you the same unhealthy or unhelpful things.  I’m reminded of a quote attributed to Albert Einstein that basically intimates that the definition of insanity equates to the performance of the same activities over and over again and expecting a different result.  We do this in life unconsciously in an almost zombie-like fashion until we begin to understand what we’re doing and that perhaps, just isn’t working for us or, well maybe, there is a reason.

My kids crack jokes about the Zombie Apocalypse which sends the mind reeling through all the zombie movies that have ever been made.  Ever wonder about those movies?  I’ve watched them and always saw a less gruesome parallel between the movies and waking life. But as I think about that further and our Trial and Error Process of existing in life unconsciously aware, I realize that for most of us our actions do represent the Zombie Apocalypse.  When we move through life without thinking and just continue to act or react, we cannot become aware of what we’re doing or why.  I am not here to judge the zombie-like experience and I use it here to make a point.  Until we become aware in our consciousness of what is happening around us, why it’s happening around us and that we are actually creating it, we’re trapped a bit in a zombie-like state.

But, I did say that the trial and error process was not a bad one and it isn’t.  To make it work to your advantage, you do at least at some point need to become at least a little bit more awake enough to see the things that you’ve done over and over and discern whether those actions and outcomes have brought you what you most desired.  If they did, great!  If they did not, why not?  How can you tell?

We have to start with pattern analysis.  In my book Changing Perspectives, the Journey is the Destination, I devoted nearly an entire chapter to pattern analysis.  I’ve excerpted a portion below to explain my meaning:

What I recommend to you is that you take a little walk back in time to yesterday, last week, last month, last year, ten years ago, young adulthood, childhood, etc.  What patterns exist over the span of your life that were repeated over time with negative results? 

Specifically, which of those repeating patterns fed negative circumstances and thoughts in your life that manifested in undesirable ways?  If you’re not sure what I mean, how is your relationship with your significant other, those in the past, your friends and your family?  Do those relationships foster feelings of love, caring and reciprocal and unconditional love?  Are those relationships balanced in such a way that you feel like your life is improved by other individuals or do you feel like some of those individuals are dragging you down like wearing cement shoes in the middle of the ocean or literally sucking the life right out of your veins?  That’s a sure fire way to tell.  Think about your past relationships and even present ones; look for patterns.  Once you find one or two or even more, categorize them if you can.  Write them down.  Talk to a friend.  Go see a cleric, counselor or someone else you know that could help you take an objective look at the negative patterns that formed in your life that resulted in negative consequences for you.  You want to understand those things that helped to form a perspective that you find no longer serves you. (66)

Believe it or not, those emerging patterns speak volumes about what parts of your life purpose are.  Consider the maze analogy again.  If you kept finding dead ends and just can’t find the cheese, one way you could try to get yourself to the goal is by remembering which paths lead to dead ends.  By identifying those, you can modify your trajectory, choose different turns when different directions present themselves and then you may eventually get to the prize!  This doesn’t have to be just one path that you take but can be part of all three of the methods I’m going to share.  This one could serve as the beginning.

Intuitive Internal Guidance System

Believe it or not, we all have an intuitive internal guidance system.  I’ve had some of my clients tell me that they had not one ounce of intuition.  I explained that as human beings we all have intuition.  Physics has proven through study and other sciences soft or not have also studied that human beings must have the ability to predict the future in order to survive.  In fact, part of our biological and conscious operating systems must rely on our ability to intuit or simulate the future probabilities in order to preserve life and limb.  When we learn how to understand this language of body-mind-consciousness and how it is actually speaking to you every moment of every day, you can begin to learn to rely on it to guide you as you move through life. 

This is much like a foreign language at first and it isn’t an easy language to understand but it is a language like any other, say like geometry, French, etc.  Learning the language is important if you wish to develop this guidance system further.  And no, I’m not talking about becoming psychic although I don’t discount that some individuals may very well be quite psychic.  Being an intuitive myself, I see it more of an ability to quickly take in information readily within the environment, filter it quickly through mental simulations and energy-body feeling and then return with the most likely outcomes (otherwise read, keen awareness).  In this approach, which likely not all will agree with, I posit that the consciousness we hold is much broader than the limited aspects of brain-mind thinking and that from the metaphysical level of the soul and spirit our consciousness can operate through energy, vibration and feeling (again, do not read ‘emotion’) and provide us a mechanism to test thoughts, experiences and concepts as either good or bad for us given the lessons we intended to learn or the things we intended to transcend in this life.

I am going to repeat a little exercise I included in one of my other books, So It’s Over.  Now What? to try to help you get more in touch with how this Intuitive Guidance System works:

To understand how this works . . . I have to teach you how to “feel” the difference between your neutral state and the state where your body-mind-spirit is not neutral and picking up on external sensory data not in alignment with your higher good.  I will tell you this takes practice though because normal anxiety can sometimes feel the same as what I’m going to describe to you.  Hopefully I can walk you through how to tell the difference . . .

If you are not familiar with meditative practice it is very simple and requires only a quiet place where you can sit peacefully just noticing your breathing and your thoughts with intent to calm the mind, body and soul.  You can research the Internet and find a number of good practices for meditation.  I’d like to teach you a simple exercise that with practice, may help you become much more in tune with how your body’s “feelings” communicate to you and translate into vital information for you when you are engaged in human interactions.  For this, you will need to engage in a meditation:

Practice a meditative session where you engage in cleansing breaths and progressive relaxation.  This means that you take maybe five slow deep in and out breaths and then continue breathing and relaxing each part of your body from the top of your head down to your toes.  Take as much time as you need to bring yourself to a very relaxed and peaceful state.

As you do the above, notice thoughts as they arise but don’t judge them.  We’re not interested in thoughts at this moment so there is no need to judge them.  Conserve your energy for feeling and I use the word as an action and not an emotion.  When you have achieved a calm meditative state, I want you to place your focus on how your solar plexus (also known as the solar plexus chakra energy space) feels.  The desired state to begin this exercise is one in which the solar plexus chakra feels calm and neutral.  Now, imagine a moment where you felt very happy.  See the image in as much detail as you can (sound, visuals, touch, taste, etc.) and feel the joy or happiness of that moment.  Now turn your attention to your solar plexus area.  Notice how your solar plexus area feels. 

Now, return to a calm centered and peaceful state and just breathe.  I want you now to call to mind the last time you felt anxious.  See the scene and the events surrounding it in every detail you can possibly recall.  How does your solar plexus area feel now?  Does it feel different than when you imagined the happy moment?  Just notice the difference. 

Return to a calm centered and peaceful state and just breathe.  I want you now to call to mind the last time you were accused of something you had nothing to do with.  See the scene, hear the words, allow the feelings of incredulousness to rise.  Now notice how your solar plexus area feels?

When in a calm and peaceful state, calling to mind a happy experience may give you a sense of joy or quick and pleasant vibration in your solar plexus area.  Calling to mind an anxious experience may give you a sense of dread and an unpleasant inconsistent vibration in your solar plexus area like maybe too many butterflies, maybe even a sinking feeling.  Calling to mind an experience that left you feeling incredulous may give you a sense of sinking, twisting dread in your solar plexus area.  This is the one you want to pay attention to.  If someone is speaking to you and you are feeling that sinking uneven sense of twisting dread vibration in your solar plexus, you are being manipulated or there is either a lie you are being told or telling yourself about what or who you are experiencing.  Another way to think about it is whenever you feel that sense of obligation to do something your heart isn’t in, you’re likely being manipulated.

It may take some time to be able to feel your body’s detection system but it does exist and if you learn how to feel it and pay attention to it trusting it’s truth and learning to differentiate how different experiences feel for you in that space or even other places in your body, you will know when you are being manipulated even if the other person is denying it.  If you are being manipulated for money, or being lied to or otherwise being used, your body can sense it and it will start to trigger it’s systems for self-preservation.  The same is true if you are lying to yourself about something, in denial about something or engaging in behavior unhealthy for you.  Your body, mind, heart, soul and spirit never let you down.  It’s just learning to understand the language that takes patience and practice (just like learning math – yikes).  It can be done.  It’s important to avoid manipulations that are harmful to your person, your emotions, your bank book, etc.  You are equipped to protect yourself if you can learn how to do it.  (39)

Rise Above Approach

This approach is simple and can really make a lot of difference either all by itself or used in combination with the other two processes or methods noted above.  This process requires only that you seek to understand the truth of something but using pure logic and maybe even reason.  I will say that this process is not as easy as it might seem and also takes quite a bit of practice and quite honestly, patience.  When trying to understand messages and themes that are arising in your life, you sometimes do have to put your focus on the outside world at least for a moment but you must do so with the intent to understand.  It will cost you something though.  It will temporarily cost you the lowest level of your egoic consciousness at least temporarily.  Don’t worry, nothing of value is ever lost when you temporarily set aside your egoic drives to achieve this or that.   

To rise above something, you must literally rise above it.  Sometimes the ego sets off these psychological urges to engage in something or with someone at the same level of something or someone who is coming at you.  When mired in this kind of ‘gravity’ you are completely unable to rise above a situation to see, with clarity, what it is that you are truly dealing with.  In this state you cannot truly see, hear or feel anything accurately.  All you can feel are the egoic emotions that are truly a very limited set of parameters from which to define interactions based on your own thought processing systems.  There are more ways to see the truth than just relying on our past experiences, assumptions, perceptions and emotions (even if all of these are a natural function for us in physical form).

The process actually begins quite simply in that rather than reacting to a situation before you and I would consider this method in terms of understanding messages coming to you specifically from human to human interactions, you stop and begin questioning whether your feelings are valid AND why the other person may be acting as they are.  The same is true of a situation you are facing.  You need to be able to quickly determine whether or not your perceptions and reactions are valid. Some sample questions, “Does your (insert relationship descriptor of a person here) really hate you?  Is the world really against you?  Do you really have bad luck or bad karma?

Think back to the maze for a moment.  If everywhere you turned you always seemed to reach a dead end, you might quickly jump to the conclusion that there is no way out.  Given your recent experiences that formed this perception, it’s understandable to see why you could jump to this conclusion.  The process of rising above a situation requires that you stay away from an emotional state and instead query the data to determine it’s validity and then try to understand the true source of what may be happening. 

Are you perceiving something personally or negatively that may possibly not be intended that way (even if you could find 100 people that might perceive the situation the same way as you)?  How do you know?  Are your assumptions valid?  Do you have unconscious  malware running inside of your thought processes that are skewing your perceptions?  How can you be sure?  How would you know?  You could shift your perception and assume positive intent, alternate sources or you could validate whether what you perceive as truth is actually true.  Rising Above a situation means that you actually take the time and make the effort to rise above the situation through gaining knowledge, testing your perceptions as if they were a scientific hypothesis and then potentially altering your ‘potential’ conclusions and then your actions.  Think again of the maze, if you realize that there is a way out and you just haven’t found it yet through potentially a series of wrong turns, you have arrived at your dead-end, you can go back, retrace your steps, make different decisions and find the cheese! (45)

All of these processes described herein are designed to try to show you different ways you can begin to discern the messages and road maps showing up in the outside world without your conscious cognition entirely.  When you can begin to learn how your own body communicates with you, you can allow the body to help you know the Truth of a matter or situation when the egoic mind is busy trying to run simulations based merely on its perceptions alone (which won’t always tell you the truth).  It’s important to test your perceptions and beliefs about the various situations and people you encounter so that you might begin to understand your life’s themes and purpose.

 Rev. J.L. Harter, PhD, M.Msc., B.Msc., Author, Blogger, and Spiritual Counselor, Editor of the JMCC.  See Bio section for more information.

© 2014 Rev. J.L. Harter, PhD, (photo and words)

Beyond Belief: Good Versus Evil?

I wonder about this world and the construct I've been taught since the moments of my earliest understanding of the human language. I have always been taught that there has been "good versus evil" in the world.  We are also told that all of existence is a representation of light versus darkness. Interestingly, there are those who hold that there is an ancient fight between dark and light or good and evil.  What if this hypothesis is wrong?  What if you take apart that pre-existing belief that supports this hypothesis bit by bit? We should step back from the limited and up close experiential impression of life that is interspersed with this belief and attempt to see things differently.  Life itself was created by dark and light. Even the big bang theory creates a good basis for questioning the assumption of "dark versus light" in my mind...there was a correlation between both. There was dark matter and light matter in relative proportions that lent themselves to interactions and then reactions which formed various entities and different types of celestial creations.  What if this contest of dark and light is really just two aspects of the same whole - Life? Life in its myriad reflections is composed in part at least by both dark and light...by both good and evil.  Not one of us could say with true honesty that we've never done something some might consider dark, bad or evil in some way whether that be in our thoughts alone or in some cases, by our actions.

I step back a little further and think that perhaps the two concepts stem from the same indescribable Source and for good reason.  Maybe our understanding of the that reason may be limited in our current state of consciousness,  but there is a reason none-the-less.  Some interesting studies have taken place concerning the dark matter that exists in the cosmos and how under certain types of scrutiny, not only does dark matter exist but within some constructs, that dark matter seems to hold up the light in unexpected ways.  Pulling my thoughts from these concepts a little closer to personal experience, I ponder gazing up at a dark night sky. This is something I take great pleasure in for so many reasons.  Every time I gaze up I see nothing but the darkness interspersed with the light of stars that were born, held brilliant existence and then some burned out to be replaced in the continual cycle of birth and death.  I go back once again to the thought of light and dark and good versus evil.  As I recall how a night sky deeply contrasts and makes me appreciate the beauty of a billion twinkling stars, so too do I realize the interplay between dark and light in our human existence.  To be a little more precise with the example of human behavior I question, does not the action of actors conducting behaviors we find unsavory make us not appreciate those behaving good and kind even more?  Does inappropriate or dark behavior make us not wish to strive even more to do better, be better and work harder for good?  (Some of us at least maybe?)

If my supposition has any merit at all, then there must be some sort of design or purpose in the process.  This brings me to further questioning whether or not some souls actually agree to come here to play certain types of roles to teach others the consequences of choice, action and reaction.  I don't write to excuse or explain away what some might term bad or evil behavior in human beings that the moral majority has determined bad or evil.  I just mean to say that I wonder whether some souls don't come here just for the purpose of making the light behavior around them shine even more brightly.  When I compare the stars and my appreciation for the light, I must say the same is true in my experience with souls some might term bad.  They certainly make me appreciate those termed good all the more.  It also makes me realize we are all comprised of dark and light, good and bad whether or not we wish to hide or admit it.  We are all capable of great and wonderful things as a race of human beings but we are also capable of some pretty terrible things as well.  But maybe those good things and terrible things are only a matter of a limited judgment created from a lack of understanding of the true framework in which we all operate.

Stars are born, grow bright giving beautiful light and then they burn out over time but the darkness that holds them remains.  In this view, it seems the darkness actually supports the light.  Perhaps there are good reasons for this but we haven't entirely understood just why in the larger meaning-of-life kind of framework.  We can get to the mechanics through physics and other scientific disciplines but we haven't yet discovered the full scope and detail of the framework or fully understood that there is a framework much bigger than our limited capability for everyday thought can define.  The soul within me smiles as I write this morning because it knows in feeling what I still cannot fully articulate.  My consciousness on this side of the veil is much more limited it seems.  This grand design we experience here has a beautiful purpose in terms of what it has the potential to inspire in this Earth's inhabitants.  Our experiences, whether good or bad shape the whole of the resulting beingness that we are and have always been.  Free will dictates that we can choose how we will experience this world even if events occur seemingly randomly or by mere chance.  Even if our experiences are formed by random events or chance alone, we still have the ability to choose our perceptions of what we experience and no two of us see things exactly the same way under the exact same circumstances.  This for me, creates a wonderful diversity of experience.  This diversity of experience creates an energy of the whole that does something we are not entirely conscious of.  The collective of emotion, feeling and lessons can be accessed by us all through understanding that the differences exist.  We can agree to disagree when we experience the same thing differently or we can egotistically fight to prove that only our experience or perception is the right experience or perception.  We can choose to do whatever we wish within reason given the constructs of the elements of the world we exist in.

Some have called me a light worker.  I can't say that I own that title because I think it is incomplete.  I am not here to work the light but to inspire others to seek deeper meaning and appreciation for their experiences through this internal compelling urge to write about my own.  Am I brave or stupid?  Who knows - you can judge if you want.  I don't mind at the end of the day because I've learned about judgment too.  I can only experience a degree or two of a thing or person until I have found my way around experiencing a full 360 degrees of a thing or a person.  I find I'm continually reminding myself of this important fact.  I push myself to become more curious when I find I've entered judgmental territory.  Although I question our framework and perceptions (including my own), I do know that the judgmental landscape cannot carve out for me any understanding of truth as I seek it.  That doesn't mean, as often I've written, that I will not exercise my judgement in terms of what I will or will not participate in.  But notice that I'm curbing my judgment towards inspiring self action and taking no measure of pride in a negative judgment of another.  Oh, I've done it.  I'd be a liar if I said otherwise.  What I'm trying to say is that I've realized the futility of expending energy in that way.  It does not contribute to my growth but instead circumvents it.  I have come to this understanding by realizing fully that it is the dark and light or good and evil of all of our experiences including the interaction with all of the actors here acting in this play that is the path to the truth I wish to uncover beyond belief.  The light and dark, the good and the evil, these shape the sum total of all of our experiences.  I do not see this negatively but rather positively because this is where I've gained greater understanding.

I am utterly fascinated by the workings of the construct of this place we co-exist within.  I'm further fascinated with and very appreciative of my fellow brothers and sisters making their way through their lives.  It's no easy task although some make it look easy.  Just as many souls here can make it seem hard and such a struggle to attempt to exist at all.  Regardless, my heart goes out to them all in the hopes that they get from this place and this experience exactly what they are looking for.  The dark and the light, the shades of gray and the shadows cast from light around darkness all teach us something about our own framework.  I have no conclusions for others in my thinking this morning, just my early morning coffee induced mental meanderings.  The sun is coming up even though I can't see it.  The autumn blanket of clouds is here with us in my little part of the world.  I'm grateful for this moment to sit and to drink in the delicious feelings deep within that have resulted from the whole of my own experiences here on Earth.  There have been hard and terrifying times for me but there too have been times of such pure and pristine love and beauty that I am loath to describe them.  I fear my own limited vocabulary may take away from my experiences as silly as that sounds.

As I look back and reread these words I have written, I think I have come to a bit of a conclusion with my thoughts after all.  Everything in existence stems from the All of Everything, the Source, whether or not I understand it or can articulate the reasons why and whether or not a single other agrees.  Both our experiences of light and dark emanate in some manner from the Source.  We are given the ability to think and to create so we can do what we will with the lightness and darkness of our own thoughts and experiences and as a whole, we certainly do.  I breathe in deep the cool air of the morning and let all these thoughts go.  I need not trace every detail as I contemplate constructs. The nuances would simply drive me mad.  I only intended to scratch the surface just enough to give you something to consider.  Perhaps, maybe, some food for thought to expand your perspective beyond beliefs (which I consider to be untested hypotheses from collected or imposed theories). ~Blessings for an expansive and thoughtful day beautiful souls.  I hope you make the best of every single thing you encounter.  Savor the good and appreciate the challenging for the thoughts and actions these concepts compel you to live with and better yet, to truly understand.

Rev. J.L. Harter, PhD, M.Msc., B.Msc., Author, Blogger, and Spiritual Counselor, Editor of the JMCC.  See Bio section for more information.

© 2014 J.L. Harter (photo and words)

Learning to Listen

In our day-to-day, we seemingly go through the motions engaged in many things we think are so important.  We become mired in the egotistical dramas and plays projected onto our field of existence by ourselves and by others.  We participate without thinking either on the offense or in defense as each situation may call us to do and while we do it, in our strategizing and striving we’re forgetting something important… the “still small voice.”

There is more to the “still small voice,” our thoughts and our actions than achieving some goal that either we create or is created by others for us to aspire to.  There are multiple levels and layers of consciousness that we remain mostly unaware of as we live our lives each day.  Our minds hold our consciousness, our bodies hold a level of consciousness, our souls hold a consciousness and our spirits hold a consciousness.  Each of these levels represent the concept of the still small voice and each aspect of consciousness speaks in it’s own language.  If we do not learn how to listen, we may encounter some uncomfortable or otherwise dire results in our efforts.

Each of the levels of consciousness that I ascribe to the “still small voice” as I’ve described comprise a highly collaborative system of being or existence, if you will.  The mind thinks and sets forth an energy pattern that influences our actions based on our assumptions and perceptions.  The body’s consciousness in collaborative harmony with the mind’s consciousness will manifest through physical and sometimes emotional feeling.  The soul’s consciousness is beyond the consciousness of the day to day but it can be felt through true and pure emotion that is not egotistically based in any way, shape or form.  The spirit’s consciousness is much more global and also uses a language of energy that influence not only the being that it is part of a person but everyone and everything around the being or person.

Each of these levels of consciousness is always in constant collaboration with the other, constantly communicating messages back and forth and creating through this collaboration, our experiences here in life.  If we cannot hear what the deeper messages are for us, we may end up sick, stressed out, ulcers, cancer or other things we really don’t care to deal with or walking into untenable situations for us.  Now having said that, I cannot discount that each soul has set itself up with a specific series of experiences from which to learn in this life.  If one wishes to learn from the cancer experience, it is not wrong thought or ignoring messages that creates the cancer.  It is just the being wished to create an experience for itself and through learning to listen, one can come to greater and more peaceful learning from the experience.  Speaking from experience, in my own case I chose a series of lessons of involvement with certain types of interactions unconsciously from the conscious mind’s perspective.  There was an experience I wished to have I was completely unconscious of but once I learned the languages, the other ways in which consciousness spoke, I started to grasp the lessons before me much more quickly and much less painfully, I might add.

Let me give you a more specific example.  Let’s say someone is told their whole life by others that they must achieve a certain position or possessions in order to be recognized or loved.  A person who engages in those endeavors may achieve the results and yet find stress and anxiety or insomnia has taken hold.  In this kind of example, what you have is the body’s consciousness speaking and know that it does not speak alone.  While consciously one may be unaware of the other consciousness aspects speaking, the body or the mind can start to experience messages solely intended to get one’s attention.  If you can see or feel the message, you can give yourself pause to say, “Hmmm, if I am achieving all I set out to do with this goal or that aspiration, why am I not happy, sleeping or enjoying life?  That is the intent of the message of body manifesting messages through mental challenges such as anxiety or depression and other possibly physical symptoms as well.

When you learn how to listen to the whole of the “still-small-voice,” you can avoid some of the negatives or even if you experience the negatives (which are a normal part of existence), you can learn to deal with them more effectively.  You can deal with them more effectively by becoming more conscious of your own internal messaging system.  If your behavior is incongruent with the truest desires of your spirit or soul, they’ll begin to speak until they find a way for you to consciously understand (Now do you understand life’s repeating lessons?).  In this way, you will never allow yourself to truly let yourself down no matter what it is that you face.  You have an amazing consciousness system that communicates with you all the time about your environment, energy, people and situations and not just from the limited ego-judgmental perspective.  That is only one small form of the conscious communication system.  What you want is to understand the communication of the “still small voice” so that you can learn to respond to what you face (stay in your own light or power) rather than reacting to it (not staying in your own light or power).  When the egoic mind alone is in charge disregarding all other parts of the consciousness communications going on, you are forever reacting, taxing your energy and biological systems, becoming more mired in the illusions of perceptions and assumptions and can lead yourself down some pretty dark and treacherous roads. 

Through learning how to listen to all aspects of the consciousness communication systems that are part of who you are, you will always make it back home to peace, bliss, joy, serenity, understanding and compassion.  One of the greatest ways to learn how to listen is to understand when you are clearly not listening.  If you are reacting, tired, stressed, sick, etc., it’s possible you are not really listening to the guidance so readily available to you that can help you understand and cope.  Another fantastic way to learn how to listen is meditating.  Taking up a practice every day of stopping all thought, learning to listen for the “still small voice” and even asking your higher consciousness systems to speak more meaningfully or obviously to you, you will start to understand the language.  It takes time, patience and willingness to benefit from the communications.  The reality is that whether you consciously learn to listen or not, the system itself will still find a way to get you the message.  The difference is a matter of control and the only thing you truly have the power to control is you.

I suggest that you take the time to fully understand how it is that you communicate with you.  All the wonder and magic that is YOU, will never let you down.  Mind your thoughts, stay open to learning to understand the language of the various consciousness systems through intent and then begin the noticing, the timing and the many ways in which you naturally and always speak to yourself and guide yourself in a positive light.  Remember, when it is the egoic consciousness involved, you are reacting.  When it is the other consciousness or higher consciousness involved, you are self and other-compassionate and more understanding and open…and thus, much more willing to hear the “voice” within.  Listen.  You truly have so much to say to you and you are worth listening to.  ~Blessings.

Rev. J.L. Harter, PhD, M.Msc., B.Msc., Author, Blogger, and Spiritual Counselor, Editor of the JMCC.  See Bio section for more information.

© 2014, J. L. Harter

(Photo, http://psychicpowernetwork.info)