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Posts tagged ‘True Identity’

Crossing the Dark Threshold . . . . . . into the Light of Day

“Waves of anger and fear Circulate over the bright And darkened lands of the earth . . . .”    (W.H. Auden, September 1,1939)

Plato described the transition from the old self to the authentic Self as moving from out of “the cave” of isolation, where life is observed as confused reflections on the walls of the cave, into the light of day where one is fully engaged as a liver of life rather than an observer only.

Crossing the Threshold                                                    

This passage of the soul from out of the dark cave and into the light of day is made much easier with the assistance of a “spiritual midwife,” or mentor.  One need not go it alone these days with the many spiritual guides and personal transformation facilitators available. 

 One such spiritual midwife, and “guru” to many, is Dr. Joan Borysenko, clinical psychologist and medical scientist, who has done much work in body-mind healing and spiritual transformation.  She offers some professional insight into this process of transformation in a tape series entitled, “The Power of the Mind to Heal.” With her permission, I would like to share with you now an excerpt from these tapes, primarily for the grounding in the work-a-day world her words provide, but also for the profound gift she brings into the healing field through her expression and her deep and compassionate understanding of humanity’s state of amnesia, out of which many today are awakening and struggling to make sense out of the events of a dawning new age which we are all seeing and experiencing in a new way.

From Dr. Borysenko’s tapes:

   “The events that call us forth from Plato’s ‘Cave’ are different for each of us, and perhaps the best prayer in times of trouble is not to pray for the troubles to cease but to pray that our hearts and minds stay open to change so that we’ll emerge from our crisis transformed, wiser and more loving.

   “Unfortunately we’ve lost our cultural understanding of the value of darkness. Suffering and pain are downright unpopular in a culture that’s addicted to ‘positive thinking.’  But a lot of what passes as ‘positive thinking’ isn’t positive at all . . . .  A lot of us slap on a veneer of positivity and phony faith to hide a heart full of pain and fear.

   “The psychologist Carl Jung put it very clearly when he said that we can’t find the light by imagining good things.  The only way to the light is to go back out through the darkness.  Then we can emerge transformed with truly changed minds. 

   “The mythologist, Joseph Campbell, said, ‘one thing that comes out in myths is at the bottom of the abyss comes the voice of salvation. The black moment is the moment when the real message of transformation is going to come. At the darkest moment comes the light.’”

This has certainly been true in my own experience of dark times.  Another way this has been expressed is “The darkest hour is the one before the dawn.”  Some of my best days have been after two or three days of internal void and mental cloudiness, passing through layers in the veil. We may be fortunate to have had someone represent the light of Being to us so vividly and powerfully that we are able to forge a path all the way to the most sacred and holy place within us and perhaps even fuse in rapturous union with the Beloved, losing ourselves to the world and entirely into the arms of Love.  Sometimes, in such ecstatic experiences “in the light,” the path we forged with the help of another’s light closes up behind us and we lose our way back out into the world.  We leave the world to ascend the mountain of spiritual attainment and enlightenment, where we stay for a season knowing that we must return to the world we left behind.

Often we have to find our way back out on our own through a heart cluttered with fears and doubts and a mind rigidly structured with beliefs and prejudices of sorts we never even imagined were there.  This time, however, we have only our own light, which by now we have learned to shine, to light up the path leading out into the world of hard facts and experiences. For me, finding my way back out into the light of day where I could be of real value and service to others has been the greatest test of my spiritual awakening and transformation.  The most difficult of tasks has been to learn how to reach out and to touch people where they are.  I could not have done it without help, without someone to at least provide a sounding board for clarifying issues and validating my own gut perceptions and new-found sense of true self-worth.  One way and the other, both in going in to find oneself and in coming out to reveal the wonderful one I discovered my Self to be, one has to traverse the darkness of the cave where the false, isolated self spent its entire life wandering around in a solitary way.

Dr. Borysenko describes this transitional period from her professional point of view as represented quite often by physical, mental and emotional symptoms of so-called “dysfunction.”

   “Not only have we lost our appreciation of the value of darkness as an authentic path to the light, we’ve also lost the priesthood whose function it was to bring us through the transitions.  All too often our religious priesthood is as out of touch with sources of wisdom as is our secular priesthood—therapists and psychiatrists [and I would include here health care physicians] who think more in terms of pathology than they do of growth and potential.

   “We can learn a great deal about approaching these times of transition by observing how the priesthood of more primitive societies treats people in transition—whether the transition comes unbidden or whether it is set into motion by a special ritual or rite of passage.

   “The anthropologist, Victor Turner, is well known for his study of the ritual process in different cultures.  He defines a ritual as a ‘rite of passage,’ a transition between two distinct states of being, or stations in society.  The traditional rite of passageway in primitive cultures consists of three distinct stages: the separation from one’s previous state of being; the liminal period during which you dwell between two worlds, not here and not there; and the reincorporation afterwards into some new role or status in the society.

   “The ambiguous intermediate state of liminality is a kind of dwelling at the threshold of a new life.  It’s often compared to being in the womb, in a state of darkness and invisibility, or ‘wandering in the wilderness.’ The Jews wandered in the wilderness for forty years when they left bondage in Egypt, a time of dwelling at the threshold before they were re-born to a new life in Palestine. Jesus, too, wandered for forty days in the wilderness when he died to his old self, the carpenter, and was reborn to his God Self.

   “Each of us, in that very same movement from our separate ego to our God Self, has to do some wandering in exile and in this period we may feel confused, unhappy and like we have nothing left to hold onto.  If our culture hadn’t gotten so out of touch with the meaning of ritual and myth, we would know that this ‘no-man’s land’, the ‘dark night of the soul’ between the death of our old self and the birth of our new Self was grace, not ‘mental illness’ or ‘PMS’.”

What a wonderful and empowering attitude to hold toward a health crisis, or a life crisis, that might come our way seemingly just about the time we thought everything was going so well in our lives. I know for a fact, just from my own personal experience with physical illness, that unresolved inner issues come up to be addressed when the physical body is undergoing a viral cleansing, for example. One is compelled to be thankful for such interruptions sent by life perhaps to get one’s attention. It is believed by some psychologists that our own sub-conscious minds create the symptoms of dis-ease in order to alert us to the need to address important issues in our lives.   We can rest in assurance that all is well during times of crisis rather than tense up in fear of the unknown.  Healing can come quickly as we listen to our inner voice for the very specific message that will open the door to us for transformation. It is there if we are quiet enough, and honest enough, to hear it. Joan continues:

“The collective hypnosis—our unconscious adherence to the familiar beliefs that guide our lives—is broken in the liminal period, in that time of exile, in exactly the same way our own uncelebrated life crises strip us of what we know, delivering us to the threshold of the unknown. In times of transition we awaken from the familiar terrain of life and find ourselves in alien territory.  If we know that this frightening, unknown period was a necessary transition, like the transition period of labor, we could more easily ask for whatever help was needed, and more patiently hold on and wait for the birth.  We could take comfort that the process was natural, not pathological.    Each dark night and each little death peals away a layer of conditioning, restoring our sight so that we can see more clearly.  What a difference it would make if a person in the throes of a life crisis were called an ‘initiate’ and then skillfully led to a rebirth. Instead, our psychological initiates are often labeled neurotic, psychotic, addictive or character disordered, labels that create helplessness and low self-esteem. These labels reinforce the fearful story that we are damaged and less than whole.    Some of the power of the ‘Twelve-Step Recovery Program’ comes from the context in which addiction in placed. In anonymous programs, addictions are transitions between a life where the person was out of touch with a higher power and one in which the reality of that power becomes not only the force for recovery but also a renewal of the meaning of life. Addiction as a liminal experience, for those who are willing to see it in that light, creates excitement, empowerment and even gratitude for the addiction as a guide to a new, more self-aware and fulfilling life.”

It is one thing to admit that one’s physical body is addicted to a drug, such as alcohol, and to take the necessary steps toward sobriety and non-dependency.  It is another thing entirely to take on the label of “alcoholic” as one’s identity.  The statements “I am an alcoholic” or “I am a drug addict” can serve to dispel patterns of denial, but it isn’t the truth of who one is.  Such firmly held fixations in consciousness could come to hide awareness of one’s real identity.  This can set up a circular codependent relationship between condition and treatment in which one must continue being an “alcoholic” in order to participate in the process of treatment, and vice versa.  Further, one might be prone to think that, without that identity, one would become as nothing.

In the health field, similar situations arise where one becomes identified with the “disease” for which one is being treated.  To continue saying, for example, “I am a diabetic” fixes the condition of diabetes even more firmly in consciousness, which in turn creates the vibrational terrain that determines health and dis-ease in the body-mind continuum.  What if one were to say instead, for example, “I am fine.  My body, however, is having some difficulty handling sugar at this time, so I will withhold sugar from my diet until such time as I have corrected the reason(s) for the difficulty?” This, in my view, would be more accurate as well as the intelligent and cooperative first step to take toward a holistic approach to healing while engaging orthodox, traditional disciplines and therapeutic methodologies.   (Excerpted from Sacred Anatomy)

I will continue with this theme in my next post.  Thank you for sharing my meditations. I would love to share any thoughts you may have. Until my next post,

Be love. Be loved.

Anthony

tpal70@gmail.com

Category:

Addictions, Angelic Identity, Body Temple, Conscious Evolution, Consciousness, Divine identity, Dr. Palombo's blog, Endocrine system, Energy anatomy, Finding your Self, Healing Tones Blog, Holistic Healing, Purification, Sacred Anatomy, Thymus Gland, Transformation

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“Who Am I?”

“Man is unique not because he does science, and he is unique not because he does art, but because science and art equally are expressions of his marvelous plasticity of mind.” —Jacob Bronowski

In the PBS concert presentation of Les Miserables earlier this past Summer, Jean Valjean seeks an answer to the ancient question: “Who am I?”– to which Marius, the young man whose life he had just saved, responds “You are Jean Valjean.” But that answer doesn’t seem to satisfy Jean Valjean’s deeper query, as he keeps repeating “Who am I?”– as though asking “Who is this man I’ve become? What fate has brought me to this end? What have I done in past lives? What karma have I brought with me to this life? Why am I here now? WHO AM I?”

These questions stir deep currents in my soul. I will speak candidly here. Whether or not these were Jean Valjean’s deeper queries, they are mine today.  Oh, I can give answers to them, answers that I’ve learned during my spiritual awakening, but they somehow do not satisfy the deeper query of the mind — and it is the mind that is asking.

I know who I AM.  My mind, on the other hand, has its uncertainties, as though it has a separate identity and history from who I Am — even a collective one.  After all, my personal intellect will evaporate with my physical body’s last breath. However, the Body of Mankind is still around after all these thousands of years, and the collective Mind, which we all share, is still alive and active in this world, having acquired its own separate identity as the “human ego.” 

But why are these questions visiting my mind now in this day and time — and they do seem personal. Is it my Catholic upbringing that has made it so easily susceptible to guilt and blame when things fall apart? Whence is this guilt that lingers in my mind — and in my heart? Has my mind poisoned my heart with guilt and blame?  Why the feelings of guilt over ancient failures and catastrophes, as though I was there and responsible for them? Was I there?!  Is this voice in my head the voice of the collective Mind awakening from its coma wondering what’s been going on all these eons of time while it slumbered in amnesia, and now asking “WHO AM I?” 

Lucifer — Light Bearer — Morning Star

The archaic word “Lucifer” has been with me for several decades, much like an archetypal presence, ever since I heard my spiritual mentor speak of the return of this “fallen angel” to its rightful place in Heaven as the “Light Bearer.” I have thought long and hard about this over the years, as something within me identifies with Lucifer.  My role in life seems to be associated somehow with Lucifer? Am I simply one of many incarnate angels whose role it is to be a Light Bearer in this world? 

Here is a passage from the Gospel of John that poses a question for me:

“There was a man sent from God, whose name was John. The same came for a witness, to bear witness of the Light, that all men through him might believe. He was not that Light, but was sent to bear witness of that Light. That was the true Light which lighteth every man that cometh into the world.”

Was the Evangelist John a Lucifer?

I’ll take this a step further and ask: Why is Lucifer also the name given to the Devil and Satan? And how can Satan, who is also called the “Prince of darkness” be a bearer of Light?  The prophet Isaiah had some words to say about Lucifer:

“How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning! How art thou cut down to the ground, which didst weaken the nations!” For thou hast said in thine heart, “I will ascend into heaven. I will exalt my throne above the stars of God. I will sit also upon the mount of the congregation, in the sides of the north. I will ascend above the heights of the clouds. I will be like the Most High.”   

Yet, thou shalt be brought down to hell, to the sides of the pit.

They that see thee shall narrowly look upon thee, and consider thee, saying: “Is this the man that made the earth to tremble, that did shake kingdoms; That made the world as a wilderness, and destroyed the cities thereof; that opened not the house of his prisoners?” (Isaiah 14:12-17)

This sounds more like a celestial event involving comets and planets than a biblical one involving angels and men — given the cataclysmic upheavals in our planet’s ancient history where, in one episode, the planet Venus, for instance, was given the name “Baal Zevuv” (which later became Beelzebub), and “Lucifer,” the “Morning Star,” due to her brightness in the early morning sky before she was “cut down to the ground” to become a comet for several terrifying decades until she was restored to the status of planet.

This all makes it obvious that one cannot take biblical accounts literally, as men in those days didn’t know what to make of the cataclysmic events occurring in the heavens and on the earth. So they made up stories to pass on to their offspring . . . and to record in the history books, which the Bible is, “The Story of Man.” 

The word Lucifer was not always associated with the Devil and Satan.  In one of the Gnostic Gospels, for example, Jesus calls Mary Magdalene “Mary Lucifer” because of her brightness of spirit, her mental acuity,  and her passionate love for him.  He was the Light of the world and she his “Beloved Companion” in their shared mission, his Light-bearer, the “Apostle of apostles.” She knew and understood him while the other disciples only believed in Him — except for John the Beloved, who also knew and loved him. They both shared a conscious awareness of his mission and purpose, his divinity, as well as their own.

Who and what is Lucifer?

Here’s my take: Lucifer in Heaven was a bearer of the Light of Truth, and after his fall from grace, from Heaven, he became the Devil and Satan, the “Prince of darkness” and “the Prince of this world.” If this is so, Satan is no longer in Heaven but on Earth; no longer an invisible but a rather visible entity on the material plane of this world, which we should be able to see. I believe we do — and not in the television series.

Where is this Satan, then? Is he embodied by Donald Trump, perhaps? Some may think so. Maybe by the Koch brothers and the Cabal that rule the world economy from Wall Street and the World Bank? Is he in Russia as Vladimir Putin, or more likely in the murderous dictator of Syria, Bashar Hafez al-Assad — who, by the way, was born in Damascus on September 11, 1965. Did Assad bring down the World Trade Center to celebrate his 36th birthday? The number 36 can be interpolated as three sixes — 666, the “number of the beast, which is also the number of a man.” The number 666 is also the address of the Jared Kushner Tower on Fifth Avenue, which was recently bailed out by Qatar in Saudi Arabia, where Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman lives in decadence. Perhaps he is the “Prince of this world.” Maybe the Devil is all of the above. So many “evil men” at which to point the finger.

Here’s something significant:  The Hebrew for the blamer is shatan, or obstacle; the Greek for divider is diabolos. Hmm….  

I don’t believe the Devil is anyone or anywhere “out there.” I believe that we humans are devils when we cast blame and pass judgement on one another, and are hateful and cruel toward ourselves and one another.

(I just learned today that human trafficking is the number one illegal money maker, a near forty-billion-dollar-a-year business globally — with illegal drug sales second and gun sales third.)

In my early years, while studying for the Catholic priesthood, my father used to advise me not to try and save the Devil, as he was lost forever. As I awakened spiritually, I began to understand more about who the Devil is, and I found myself doing exactly the contrary. This has been a central part of my life’s mission and purpose: saving Lucifer from perdition by inviting my own mind, drawn by its love for the beauty of Truth, to ascend to its appointed place in Heaven as the Light Bearer it was designed to be. This is my whole purpose for writing: to shine Light on the path of our sojourn through this “valley of the shadow of death.” 

I see light shining in this valley as more and more angels incarnate, emissaries of Light, are using their minds to shine the Light of Truth into the consciousness of mankind, enlightening us about our true state and that of our world — but also about our humanity and our true identity:  Be Your Humanity: Know Your Divinity. 

Life in this chaotic world is beginning to be brightened a bit because Lucifer is being restored to its heavenly role as Light Bearer . . . shining Light as well on our self-active past: 

The Ascent of Man such celebrated “great minds” as Dr. Jacob Bronowski, and Sir David Attenborough on Overpopulation, speak of is more about the awakening of the mind to its reckless past and to the stark realities of existence on a rather small planet that has limited accommodations for its voracious appetite for more of everything, including people. It is precisely man’s “marvelous plasticity of mind,” along with his wild and evil imagination, that are responsible for the dire straits in which we find ourselves today. 

I believe the so-called “Devil” is simply the self-active mind of man, and that Lucifer is the Truth-active Mind of Man, neither of which has a separate identity from who I AM.  For it is with our minds that we shine the Light of Truth in this darkened world full of hate and lies.  The mind is a wonderful capacity when used as a lens to refocus the Light of Truth from within and not as a reservoir of “knowledge” that, given its rather thin substance, can easily become overwhelmed and fragile with too much information and so-called “knowledge.” And its rightful place is not up front leading the way with its bright ideas and empty promises, but behind us, with our Spirit, the Light of Love that we are, leading forth in our lives.  This is the truth of our humanity and our identity, a truth we must come to love and cherish in our hearts.   

I’ll leave you to ponder these words of Lloyd A. Meeker (Uranda):

The Truth, through the mind, through the working of intelligence, provides the design, the factors of form in concept or belief; and Love, through the heart, animates that which is accepted by the mind. And the physical body receives that which is so established, for the body as such has no choice but to receive that which is imposed upon it. . . .

Human beings accept certain things in the sense of intellectual beliefs, but that which is animated in the actual expression of their lives takes form on the basis of resentment ideas, fear ideas, rebellion ideas, or hate ideas. The real feeling manifests in the range of something which carries a critical, condemnatory or destructive attitude, and that which is of the Divine Design, even though it be seen, is not animated in the individual life because there is no particular feeling in regard to it. . . .  

Illumination comes when the mind accepts the Truth idea, and the Dominion idea, in a manner which allows the heart to animate the Dominion, Kingdom idea. Any constructive idea which becomes animated through the heart brings some degree of Illumination—vividness of comprehension and appreciation; for Illumination is simply comprehension coupled with due appreciation. By reason of appreciation there is the acceptance of value.  (Uranda)

I  will continue with the series on the spiritual significance of the Thyroid gland in my next post.  Until then,

Be love. Be loved.

Anthony

tpal70@gmail.com

Category:

Angels & Archangels, Beelzabub, Cataclysms, Climate Change, Collective Mind, Conscious Evolution, Divine identity, Dr. Palombo's blog, Finding your Self, Light, Light workers, Lucifer, Mary Magdalene & Jesus, Mind of God, Morning Star, Planet Earth, Satan, Search for Meaning, The Devil, The mind and true thinking, True Identity, Truth, Worlds in Collision

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Loving the “Lord thy God”

What does loving the “Lord thy God” entail? What does it mean to love God with all of one’s heart, and with all of one’s mind, and with all of one’s strength? A deeper question yet: Who is the “Lord thy God”?  If this is the first and great commandment – which, presumably, precedes the second one that commands we love our neighbor as our self – then it seems important, even essential, that we know what the first commandment means and entails.

For me – the only one I can speak for – it entails coming to know oneness with the Lord that I am and identifying with my divine Self.  It hasn’t always been that way with me. I was brought up to believe that God was separate from who I am.  I developed a strong pattern of love response for this image of God that I had fabricated in my mind based on what I was taught in my youth: that God was separate from me, up in His heaven, and so I prayed to and came to love this God with all of my heart and all of my mind and with all of my strength.  While it felt good and lifted my consciousness up a bit to love some divine being who is supposedly much greater than me, it really never felt honest, nor complete. I always felt that I was being attracted to something or someone outside of myself, “up there” somewhere.

Awakening to the truth of the matter was galvanizing for me. There is no one “up there” outside of myself. There is only who and what I Am here and now.  In the Biblical story of Moses’s encounter with God on Mount Sinai – or Jehovah as God was known to the Israelites – when Moses asked God for his name, God answered “I AM THAT I AM.” God is the Essence of existence in all forms of life. He is the I AM is all things living, including human beings. That is your and my identity as one made in the image and likeness of God, a son or daughter of God. It is the identity of each one of us as individual expressions of God. Accept it. BE it and love it with all of your heart, mind and strength. Give it expression in your daily living in acts of kindness and appreciation. Then you cannot but love your neighbor as your very Self because your neighbor is your very Self.

The truth is simple. We are divine beings incarnate in human forms. Why have we made it so complicated in our theological doctrines and religious dogmas?  Perhaps it is because you can’t sell the truth.  You can only sell doctrines and dogmas as truth, which makes them mere beliefs in and about the truth. When one comes to know the truth one is set free from his or her beliefs and moves beyond them into the experience of one’s true divine Self: one with God, one with neighbor, one with All.  So is it. So let it be.

Be love. Be loved.

Anthony

Category:

Beyond belief, Identity in the One, Love, Loving God, On Human Relations, True Identity, Truth

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