1/7/12 Saturday am
I am feeling wired. I guess that’s a good word. Lack of deep sleep I think. Caffeinated even though I’m not. Excited for life and possibilities on the tip of my tongue. Also apprehensive, cautious about not taking on anything that is going to lead me astray. I need to remember to relax and take things easy. It is hard to maintain a balanced awareness once I’ve kicked into gear. Its hard not to go all the way into overdrive. I can’t last at those overdrive levels if the motivation is just coming from me and my ego. I can only last if the energy is coming from Source and I’m aligned with source. I already learned this in grad school, so if that’s what the job is meant to teach me, I don’t want to relearn that!!! On the other hand, if I can move beyond that and be present in such a situation and have fun and it has other things to teach me in terms of furthering my soul work delivery system skills and preparing me to give back to the world, than I will gladly be put to the test. I ask to remain unattached to the identity the job tries to confine me in. I ask to maintain awareness of source through out the challenging times of the job. I ask to keep an attitude of play and lightness, remembering the bigger picture when things are deadline driven and stressful.
There is no right or wrong way. All ways will lead me to the place I am meant to take in this lifetime.
For now, I will use my current job and life as the gifts they are to be in the moment even when the moment seems monotonous and repetitive. Cultivate my connection with the people and the horses. Be kind to myrself by being present. That is a huge accomplishment and learning experience right there.
“This wandering in the darkness is a wrestling with angels, a struggle the healthy ego hopes to lose” (Plotkin, riffing on Rilke's poem)
That’s exactly it. I want to stop struggling, surrender and lose this fight.
"As a wanderer, you apprentice to the unkown, to mysticism. You long to be initiated into the fully embodied life of your soul, but you will have to wait. You’ll have to place your faith and love and hope in the waiting. But you will be anything but idle." (Plotikin)
"A sound man by not advancing himself, stays the further ahead of himself. By not confining himself to himself, sustains himself outside himself. By never being an end in himself, he endlessly becomes himself”
"Abide at the center of your being; for the more you leave it, the less you learn."
-Lao Tzu – Tao Te Ching
"Always be aware of what you lose as well as what you gain"
"What is done for profit and what is done for itself"
"The universe is a communion of subjects, not a collection of objects"
"To know how to approach something is so terribly important, but generally people don’t learn this until later in life."
Key aspects of adulthood – capacity to appreciated the complimentary of opposites. Opposites like men and women attract one another because they are complimentary (not contradictory)
Cocoon skills/tasks:
1) leaving home and relinquishing attachment to adolescent identity
- addressing developmental deficits from earlier stages
- giving up addictions
- exploring the sacred wound
- learning to choose authenticity over social acceptance
- making peace with the past
- learning the art of disidentification thorugh the practice of meditation
2) Exploring mysteries of nature and pychye
A. acquiring a set of soul craft skills (dreamwork, self-designed ceremony, nature dialogues, deep imagry work, sensitivity to signs and omens, soul poetry, fasting, tracking)
B. Cultivating soulful relationship to life
- art of solitude
- discovering nature as a mirror to soul
- wandering in nature
- living the questions of the soul
- confronting own death
- the art of shadow work
- the art of romance
- mindfulness practice
- service work
- advanced loyal soldier work (walking into the fire)
- developing the 4 dimensions of self
- praising the world
- developing personal relationship with the divine
- the art of being lost
- befriending the dark
- withdrawing projections
Soul Apprentice/Wellspring
Passage/soul initiation: when we commit utterly to the embodiment in the world of our soul image/story/powers
Gift: action, hope, inspiration
Task:
- aquairing and implementing a delivery system for embodying soul in culture
- identifying 1 or more cultural settings for soul work
- developing skills of soulwork and performing them in our community
- further exploration of soul image/story/powers
- the soul-rooted individuation of personality (differentiating the ego in relation to soul, as opposed to its earlier differentiation in relation to society)
Four dimensions of society:
1) North – nurturing parent or generative adult, capable of providing loving care to oneself and others, offering empathy and sevice. You develop the North by things like: leadership development courses, non-violent communication work, negotiation skills, conscious loving and intimacy, creative expression
2) South – wild self. Sensual, erotic and enchanted relationship with the world. Indigenous and instinctual. Develop through: wildnerness retreats/programs, sacred sexuality, yoga, music, rhythm and dance, natural history courses
3) West – anima or animus, the guide to soul or muse. Reveals mysteries and qualities of the soul, underworld, destiny. Continually dying to old ways while giving birth to the never before seen. Develop through: dreamwork, artistic process, deep imagry, depth and archetypal pychology, ritual, poetry, myth, creativity and soul craft
4) East – sage, fool, trickster, innocent and guide to spirit. Most at home with mysteries of the divine, upperworld, light, enlightenment, laughter, eternity and the non-dual. Leads us up to pure consciousness beyond distinctions and striving. Awakened by: study of meditation, prayer, yoga, Taoism, Buddhism, Kabbalah, Sufism, humor and comedy
Gifts of the stages:
The cocoon: the adolescent’s fire eventually transforms the ego itself, sparking a romance with the mysteries of the world. The incinerated self, or ego, reduced to ashes, transforms into a phoenix or butterfly, that mates with the world.
The wellspring: our romance with the world gives birth to the love child of our soulwork (which inspires others and generates hope)
I just had a strange thought: just as every individual can go through 9 stages from birth to death encompassing childhood, adolescence, artisan, master, elder and sage, does the collective humanity or collective universe for that matter, go through a similar set of 9 stages from birth until death? Starting and ending in the same place, and as T.S. Eliot says, “knowing it for the first time?” over and over and over?
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