Step 3: Is there a Problem here?

Why does the moth bump incessantly into the artificial light when it can be eaten by the dragonfly, which can be eaten by the birds which poop it out as fertilizer along with seeds ingested. Such a problem can be pondered and questioned with heart yet no decision can be made, for the Heart is incapable of making a decision even if its life depended on it though fully capable to follow through in what it takes to feed the Holy in Nature. In fact, the moth query is not a problem to be solved, for the moth is not self-conscious, does not worry, ever moving in a relaxed way, whether to the light or the dragonfly.

Problem solving is a part of the self-conscious stage, the stage of Integration, of Adolescence.  In the latter parts of this stage, a problem that arises after a numinous experience is a sign that Integration is indeed in full swing, that something is dying off so something new may take its place. Common occurrences of problematic swings that may occur during Integration after “mind-blowing” occurrences are emotional instability, paranoia, superstition and delusion/god complex.  But these things are generally not seen as a problem to the one experiencing them until pointed out by others.  It is only when one can step back into the Witness seat, and acknowledge and understand these occurrences for what they are, not problems but indicators, that Integration can take a back seat tot Incorporation.  And the more people in the Witness, the better for all.

So it is that for Incorporation, the Adult stage, to become your default, one must move on from a problem-based existence, both in ones own head and in their environment.  Already you are aware that an Adolescent is prone to believe their life sucks, that the world sucks, yet inherently seeks an ideal life. It was said on the website, if there is a problem it is due to your unquestioned thinking. So right here one must ask, is there a problem here? And if so, it due unquestioned thinking, accepting without question that which arises in the mind. The Mind is essentially a blank slate. Thoughts arise in the mind when apparently opposing things come together; the dualistic thinking of the conditioned mind. In fact the conditioned mind is the source of Duality, the great divide between good and bad, what is great and what sucks. Absorption in this duality may lead to self-isolation. But think of having an ice cream cone. You are walking along enjoying it when suddenly the scoop topples over onto your new shoes. You feel that this sucks but most likely you say, "oh great!"

Right here you are on the edge, that fine spider-web-like filament. Here one can move from isolation to Aloneness, which is actually pronounced all-one-ness, which can connect you to others just like you, others awakening upon the Path of Enlightenment. In the words of Kahlil Gibran, “You can be alone in the midst of people or you can be alone and join with the other one’s aloneness. There can be a real meeting between two people at the point where they always felt marooned. Right at the edge.”

For some, the problem with meeting at the edge is that you are edgy, because your heart has most likely been broken, stomped on, disregarded, ridiculed, refused, laughed at, misjudged, misunderstood, neglected and abandoned, and you don’t want others to see the messy state it is in. Alone you are Ok with your mess, your issues, your one-sidedness. But add another player and the game is on. Your first play is to hide the mess, the damage, for you would rather others not see it. And this brings up grief, in its denial stage. Really, you feel ashamed. And blame is quick to offer protection. So do the tweedle-dee and tweedle-dum pair of blame and shame operate. Yet all of this is going on within the ego, the head of wrong. In truth, just as we must go through many deaths, a broken heart is actually rather common ground in our growth; there is nothing wrong with it. It is for you to understand however, for understanding is the key here, that it is not uncommon for egoic tendencies to arise in any new relationship, new as in relating from the place of Adult rather than Adolescent. But as soon as you see this, be the Witness, they are made inert.

The Witness lives in the Heart, which knows nothing of Wrong, only the Justice of Right. Whenever something seems “wrong”, we are not in the Heart. The Heart is always Right, and what is Right is always apparent when you are on your own path, no longer walking in the steps of another. Yet just as the Heart contracts and expands, returning to your own path may have you love and get/cause hurt, put yourself back together and love again like the Fool you are. Here we learn from our mistakes, clear up our misunderstandings and move on as the Magician – one who knows better. Yet even the Magician can be foolish without access to the Values inscribed upon the heart. These Values not only rekindle your relationship with Trust, these values keep ones will from falling into Despair, of thinking the problem of connection is yours alone. And it is these values that keep your will free that it may be accessed by the Divine. What are these values? In the course of this course you will discover and experience your own set of Values as a healthy alternative to your current sense of identity and repellant for problems associated with the childhood myth that hangs upon you like ticks. These problems are what we term behavioural “ticks”.

These ticks often occur as phobias, such as the fear of spiders or the even the fear of death. Phobias advance in not seeing our one-sidedness - the clinging to of behaviours adopted as a Child to grow at that time rather than continuing to explore all aspects necessary for our developing Self in the school that is the Universe. When troublesome behaviours are not acknowledged as a part of the development of Self, they act out in the world as the depletion of finite resources, as problems. Clearly this is a mistake at this stage of your human development. There was a time for making mistakes but that time has generally expired. And if you didn’t learn much about them, we are here to change that.

Make time for your Self. Don’t make time for your problems. - Mooji

One of the first wheels we come upon after you cross the threshold is the Wheel of Mistakes, which we enter from the South then head straight Northward, the same route taken on this Course. In the South, place of the Child, you gave yourself permission to make as many mistakes as needed to grow at that stage and accept all feelings you required to make the mistake, even shame. Yet as an Adult, one must put away such childish things, initiated by the Ordeal or “shamanic death”. One of the sacrifices one must make in putting the bulk of your problems aside is exchanging your dependency on your human parents for What Is and I Am. This does not infer that you “get rid of them”, or anything else you are dependent on, only your dependence on them, which is coated in conditions. Things and people are not the problem or mistake; it is your unconscious conditioned dependence on them that make problems for you. For the self-conscious over-aged adolescent this dependence utilizes blame and shame as its operating system. For the Conscious Adult this is not so; even the energy around mistakes shifts deeply into learning from them. What I have learned as an Adult is that generally, if I am making mistakes, another mess, it is not my path that I am on, that I have swerved into the lane of another and must return to my own in order for things to stay right.

The stories of Alice in Wonderland and Maria in the Sound of Music tell of the over-aged Adolescent being overcome by the wrong path, seeing it, and moving upwards and onwards into their own Right path, fruiting into Adults in doing so.

Personality is the result of all those corrections made upon your being throughout your life, from a babe to current time. Both the women noted above had accompanying personality shifts with their fruiting; less mischief though certainly many more challenges, which required that shift in personality to meet. Personality is an aspect of the shadow, the keeper of it in a sense, for it guards those negated traits relinquished into darkness that do not fit in with the ideal Persona society has attempted to imbue you with. To begin to shake up the dirt and debris of the “wrong”, there is this Sundance prayer:

“Let my shadow fall at my feet always.”

With your shadow at your feet, small, not making long and drawn out projections, it is manageable; not to be stomped upon like grapes but seen, acknowledged and invited to become a non-threatening part of us for Integration to have a chance at it. Looking closer still, one might see the “inner” child lodged deeply in the shadow. This child too must be kept close for it has gone wild, and if left that way too long the shadow never gets a chance to become wise. Though touted in the new-age as favourable, wild is not a natural state of the human, and what is not natural is shadow. What keeps the shadow wild is the failure to integrate Grief as it arises. Indeed, a primary aspect of the Integration stage is to wade through the River of Grief and let go into it all that you love, acknowledging that all that you love will die, figuratively and literally. And that nature makes light of its losses. Your shadow can be so wise. The first step is out of the individual state into Integration.

It does indeed take a village to raise, to initiate, a child; the child relies on the adolescent to make the journey from individual to integrated and the adolescent the work of the adult to move from integration to incorporation, and the adult the elder to move from incorporation to individuation. In fact, when all stages of Self, the Child, Adolescent, Adult and Elder are engaged, there is complete absolution of self/ego; no need for it as the micro-controller of all things. And this is necessary for successful transition after death. In fact, it used to be that one didn’t physically pass on until they reached this Individuate stage, where, in your diversity, you are also a cell in a larger organism, having fit into God, the infinity of your Being. At this stage, your passing on is termed a “natural death”, the actual passing on going smoothly for it has no weighty shadow attached.

But we are going a little ahead of ourselves, looking into the distance. It is a lovely view and, we have work to do here and now. The shadow must be addressed in the Child stage for it is next to impossible to be seen by the Adolescent for they live in the place where the sun goes down. How can one see a shadow in the darkness? In the over-aged adolescent, the Child begins to believe that no one will ever come for it, a victim of the Personality, and becomes captivated by that victimizing belief as to be highly needy in that insatiable way, disruptive or despondent even, which greatly influences ones ability to respond to such distractions as depression - a common indicator that one has over-indulged the Adolescent stage. But all that happened is there was no address. Then, continuing to adhere to childish belief, greatly reduces ones Intuition to being used as a guide through the smoke and mirrors of Samsara, rather than utilizing True Intuition, not as a guide but companion of Self, of Buddha nature. And so we say again, “it is time to put such childish things aside.” Fortunately, Life and even your own unconscious, will pull what is blocking or distracting us from reaching our soul’s evolutionary intentions. Loosing the child’s attachments can hurt, and many may have tantrums, make more messes.

Perhaps a dose of Forgiveness will help. Grandmother reminds us of how Forgiveness works in this way: Just put it down dear, and walk away. And keep doing so until you can no longer remember where you put it. It will be difficult, a challenge, perhaps even seem like a problem to walk away from the child, the adolescent for awhile. You are always all parts of the wheel but for Initiation to occur it is necessary to move on. It is the mess we have gotten ourselves into and become addicted to that has one feel they are not ready or worthy to make their Rite of Passage. Yet as the old ones say:

You have to make a mess before you can clean it up.

And so the clean up begins, which includes a thorough understanding of messes, of problems, for once understood, they are rehabilitated, “cleaned up”, into the challenges or trials which strengthen your Discipline that you may make less time for problems and more for the challenges put forth to strengthen your Self, the Self that you already are but is a weakened, nearly dead, state. But the Self is awake. The Adult stage is to exercise your Awareness, which strengthens Self. Indeed, even intrusive behaviours that can result in such things as Depression can be “good” when one learns what they are and how to work with them. In this way Discipline is also strengthened rather than seen as a nagging companion. Indeed, the bulk of your challenges and trials are your own behaviours, fortified by the thoughts you chose to hold onto/horde. This is a natural feature of the climate of Greed. But we are moving into the Climate of Love, in which nothing can be held onto.

Messes in general are much like a broken heart in that you would not go in and rip it out, get rid of it just because it stands up to your closed mind, betrays your perceived entitlement to be isolated in your thoughts. You would not blow up the moon because it shines light into your darkness. If you did, you would condemn yourself to being a heartless sorcerer, one who operates from the head without heart, worshipping only the Sun and not the Moon, too. And that would be a real problem, one of the 5% that are actually real problems. The other 95% you simply make up, mostly from Fear based thoughts.

Just as the Sun and Moon govern our sky, our life on the land is governed by seasons. Fear and Love are the two seasons of Emotion, from which feelings arise. In Chinese Medicine there are basically two seasons, that which is dry and that which is wet, from which various conditional combinations arise. Now, Fear is not always a problem-maker. And Love can easily be utilized to make up problems. It all hinges on your relationship with Thought.

The Quantum state of Thought is to be in constant motion via Emotion. Emotion is the mind’s response to thoughts which produce feelings, which are rather like the tiny veins in the circulatory system that can most easily get blocked. Thought moves through via feelings. When there is a block in the circulation of Thought, the feeling or condition can make itself right at home, make a mess even. The response of the body mind to the “guest” might present as a problem, which if noted can be an opportunity to relate with emotions – that is to say, get to know them – not as intellectual knowledge but as familiar, relative. Perhaps you are already familiar with the Rumi poem, the Guest House. This is an excellent guide to working with feelings that take up lodging. This is not to promote wallowing in feelings, but to accept them as clearing agents. For it is the good nature of these guests from beyond to come and go. And do not let your memories of these guest that stay for spell haunt you. Let them come when they come and go when they go.

We present you now with a map, a set of instructions for deeper understanding of Love and Fear through the Quantum Territory of Emotion without getting carried away in their comings and goings. Remember, the map is not the territory.

Love (wet season)            Fear (dry season)
Positive Feeling (move forward)          Negative Feeling (move back)
Increase in Intelligence                       Decrease in Intelligence
Propagates Peace                          Propagates Conflict and War
Produces Oxygen                                    Uses oxygen
Blooms as Culture                             Blooms as Society
Ability to stay in touch with Faith             No contact with Faith
Able to discern Reality                       Able to propagate Illusion

A response connecting a thought to Love produces a wet season. In connecting a thought to Fear a dry season. What of a world that is sunny one day, and rainy the next? Or as in many temperate climates, sunny during the day and rainy at night? You needn’t think at all but you are addicted to it, can’t image a world without it. So perhaps for now, in your recovery process from addiction to the Sense of Thinking, imagine such a temperate world; a healthy marriage, a union of this and that.

Let us make some more notes on this map lest your one-sidedness grab on to any one thing as true as to bring about imbalance, an unhealthy marriage. Note that not all problems in the marriage/union, also known as Gamos or game, are necessarily conceived of negative feelings. Sometimes when people have a spell in Love, inspired to shine your light into the world, you become excited because your one-sidedness sees that part as a way to gain love, acceptance. But that would be like using love to make junk food; unsustainable, being greedy with it even. This is known as conditional love, love that is subject to your conditions, your one-sidedness. And these ways in which you are “bent” on things being a certain way will take some adjustments, a straightening out, sobering up even.  And this is what we do in this ritual training.

The rules of this gamos are directly related to the Cosmic Law in that you must integrate and experience each level of Truth in order to move to the next, more advanced level yet never can you recognize Truth and so never can it be claimed. This marriage also counsels with the Law of Physics which states that the total amount of matter and energy in a system must stay the same as does the Law of the Circle proclaim that indeed, negative and positive energies be balanced, wet season and dry season. Examples of imbalance are when one succumbs to negative energies, speaking loudly, being argumentative or using angry words, excessive negative energies are drawn into your system bringing excessive dry weather, wildfires, drought. Excessive positive can bring tidal waves, flood. These apparent crises trigger the easily frightened, untrained childish brain to find a way out before it is too late, having one be reactive. And in such an immature state the brain will take the way that conserves the most energy, “short-cuts”, which feelings provide. Feeling uses less energy than being rational, yet can be nonetheless become exhaustive. Not only do these short-cuts reroute insights meant to be stored in the cells that they be medicine as needed, they deplete ones Sense of Balance, another of the senses that comprise your Precious Sensitivity.

In putting such childish things as short-cuts and instant gratification from feelings away, letting them just move right along without dipping into them excessively, the growing up process comes to the Work imbued by Values, also known as “coherent emotions” capable of describing the inner landscape to some extent. A thought carried by a Value such as Compassion, Patience, Generosity or Gratitude, will birth an event of the same frequency. Then the marriage or gamos, in which Love and Fear are the board or field, grows Values, not feelings. Embodying Values also heals and teaches the Inner Child to be born again as the Wise Child, rather than remain wounded and isolated in the psychological. Recall now that the psychological and spiritual are intertwined. Values feed the healing aspects of the spiritual, feelings feed the psychological. And to feed is to Remember.

Society and Culture are two important markers in Initiation. Society is a necessary part of Initiation; it is in fact where Initiation occurs, backed by the rituals of Culture. Values are inherent to Culture. Society is easy to control/police, Culture is not. The Values of Culture are not “controllable”, they simply ARE. Yet even here, there must be balance. And this balance is maintained by Ritual, the theatre of the Absurd, in that it counters the absurdities we cling to.

The problems that exist inside your own head, the 95% that are in fact are no more than clever delay tactics one thinks up to side step their one-sidedness. These are actually termed personal or private problems, over which you have control, can police within yourself. Let me tell you a story about a girl with such a problem, which contains some things that are true, and some that are fact, as all good stories do. A yoga teacher in contact with people daily, often in sweaty closed spaces, came to me overwhelmed by her inability to cope with smells that other people carry such as detergents, tobacco, perfumes and essential oils. This challenge led to acknowledging her inability to cope with other people's energy in general. In coming to know this of her self, a sign was posted that her own precious sensitivity was disabled; the cause of her insensitivity to others, a key aspect of her personality. And Personality is our first layer of contact with Society. These are the facts. What is true is that if you cannot smell other people, the real smell that comes from their scent glands, you cannot intimately know them. Artificial scent also triggers chemical responses in the brain that add to the already busy trafficking of thoughts and conditioning going on there.

She asked for my help and I told her this:"You can't easily change the world around you, but you can change your response to it." I encouraged her to work WITH, to bring the shadow to her feet rather than "get rid of it", which for the Child feels like abandonment. If there is such a thing as getting rid of annoyance, stress, pain and discomfort, it is to change your mind about them, staying Conscious rather than stay in the critiquing, condemning self-conscious view. Furthermore, energy is a signature of ones values or qualities we can work with, apply our creativity to, even if they are not aligned with our own. To do so one must be aware of “your” thoughts, which can inflict damage or hurt to others and yourself (for they will always come back to you), or be helpful. Ask, in your prayers, for relief from any thought which is contrary to true unconditional love. You may be surprised to understand that ALL thought falls into this category. According to the power of your prayer and the sincerity of Faith that comes with the act of prayer, you begin to raise your mind to Divine Consciousness.

Some days later she admitted that my words of reckoning pissed her off. "Good", said I. "Yes," she replied. "It helped me come around." And to polish this off it is important to see that as Nature makes life of her losses, as they roll in, so can one learn not to be buried alive in Regret. And that Compassion has a scent none can resist.

As the mind changes we are more apt to learn, and to learn is not to memorize but understand. Let us turn now to the mystical skill of understanding problems without breaking into Overthinking which causes stress in the Soul that over time is pronounced, manifested, as illness. Overthinking fertilizes the man-made problems which grow as Depression. In African Ubuntu language the closest term they have to describe depression is “thinking too much”. In Belgium there were over 300 million doses of antidepressants given out to a population of 11 million in 2019. Yet and still this artful dodger, depression, can be considered the lead without which the Royal Art of Alchemy would have nothing to work with.

Words, which in essence are independent of Thought, have an alchemizing effect. As in the Shipibo prayer, The Word is and will always Be. Words do not require mind, yet mind has become addicted, attached, to the word. This attachment blocks the mind from living in Reality, in the world As It Is. Understanding works to remove these blocks. The mind is highly adaptable yet prefers not to be flooded. Once it “gets” a drop of Understanding it is most happy to do it again and again like a hummingbird going from flower to flower, or a plant collecting dewdrops. If you don’t “get” something in these readings the first time, read it once again, perhaps a third time. If still there is confusion, move on – do not cater to the confusion lest aggression or arrogance come to call. In the calcified Western Front you became used to banging your head against things. But this is no longer how you operate. Furthermore, this Course, a ritual education and so well versed in the absurd, is carefully designed to bamboozle you at times. As a test of Faith it will purposely tossle up your brain for discrepancies to become apparent to the “readers” of the Spirit World, that they may be tended to, cleaned up. This course may seems like a whack of information, but at the same time your brain is having experiences of the linear meeting the spiral that broaden your bandwidth of Integral Intelligence into a web that will always catch you. To build this web, all you have to do is keep moving through the material, dense as it may seem at times. And where you seem to come to a standstill, reach out to the Mentor for a one-on-one clearing session. At the completion of each step, initiates will also receive a Word Key Apothecary (WKA) for Understanding to keep you afloat in the storms that Logic may send into your Attention, for these readings will torment Logic.

As your dependency on Logic is exposed you may feel you are running in infernal circles, chasing your tail so to speak. Logic, also referred to as Logos, is useful in leading the lead towards Critical Thinking, which propagates ones ability to objectively follow instructions in order to stay on track with Truth via the fact-seeking masculine aspect of the Mind that often requires straight lines to follow, where the feminine prefers spirals, both of which make up the Spiders Web, the Gamos. So it is said, all good stories contain some things that are True and some that are Fact, ever traveling together promoting the Radical Interdependence of seeing both ways, fueled by the power of And. This power is now being applied to Meaning And Reason as to come to reasonable means.

In academic terms, Critical thinking is the intellectually disciplined process of actively and skillfully conceptualizing, applying, analyzing, synthesizing, and/or evaluating information gathered from, or generated by observation, experience, reflection, reasoning, or communication, as a guide to belief and action. In its exemplary form, it is based on universal intellectual values that transcend subjectivity. Is your head hurting yet? Perhaps you can see here how it is that Critical Thinking can easily become confused with Overthinking. But there is a difference; one leads in the Right way and one the wrong. And in the Right, there is no wrong way to get it right. The wrong way does take more our of precious time and sensitivity, deviating about 95% of your attention toward those personal inner problems, not actually working with them, but feeding them, like an absent-minded parent does a child to keep them out of their hair. Thoughts do not come from you yet can easily take you over, become you and make a mess in doing so. The central “volatile solution” of all problems is Thought.

Thoughts are just fine on their own, without need of a thinker
yet the two as inseparable as young lovers.

A problem is sort of a thought that has gone off, held on to for too long. Just like emotion, thought must remain in constant motion. Not the looping round and round kind of motion but the thoughtfulness of seeing a thought through, of actually being aware of what you are thinking rather than simply continuous thinking. Loops are common due to an over-developed sense of Thinking, a sense overly relied upon yet largely unmonitored in the self-conscious, rather like the attention the Sun sign gets in astrology rather than taking the time to consult with all the houses before taking action. As an individuated portion of Self it is “your” responsibility to the group, “you” as an organism of the Individuated, a piece of Infinity, to learn how to work with Thought for humanity to advance spiritually. To do so, a good portion ones attention must be devoted to Knowing the Self, the Right place for attention to be. Fortunately, the Right naturally comes to one with the ability to Discern, a skill you will develop upon this course that we will also refer to as Know-How.

Let us now direct your Sense of Thinking to a thought and seeing it through. And in doing so, you may also get a drop of Understanding on what else this Sense can be applied to. For it is not exclusive to Thought. How did Steve Jobs, creator of the Apple computer, turn the symbol for the fall of humanity, the bite out of the apple held culpable for our being kicked out of paradise, the emblem of blame and shame, into the seed symbol for creativity? How did he take an established myth, a belief, backed by the minions of Opinion and dream a new one?

Firstly, he put aside within himself the social belief that held this symbol culpable, that is to say, responsible for all that is wrong, and in doing so charged his own natural response ability to think critically, rather than criticize or condemn, and in doing so changed his mind. In short, he became the change he wished to see. He came round; actualized. For some, the mention of a particular person will trigger you. And then the trigger may blind you from continuing to move; paralyzing you. But read on.

Jobs then aptly broadcast the Intelligence come of it virally, the result of which is that you are likely staring at a symbol of the bitten apple on the upper left hand corner of mans new best friend at this very moment. Yet be not stuck in the corner. For what is happening here has broader range and the Viral, a force to be reckoned with, not something one wants to be cornered by. “Going viral” can be used for all sorts of things but more important than this is that you remember that Discernment develops through keen awareness of YOUR RESPONSE level to the thoughts that enter you. In this way, Discernment returns as the key feature of your Sense of Thinking, ever growing Awareness, which tends to see all as clouds passing by. With Discernment on board you will no longer be so addicted to thought. One may even come to Believe, as it is meant to be.

The extinguishing of old beliefs is key to what is referred to as the 6th Extinction. Humanity need not face full extinction, only the extinction, or “putting out” of useless, parasitical beliefs, as for the heritage seed of Believe to broadcast the pollen of Faith. When you Believe - have sufficient faith and conviction - meets with refined Discernment and its Know-How, it is much easier to survive any crisis. Indeed, you may find yourself saying, “Crisis? What crisis?” You may also note that we have not said, what you believe in…all that is required is a good seed of Believe itself.

Once in the place of Adult, where the rights are Understanding and Responsibility, there is actually less and less to respond to, for the Contents of Mind get settled down, the more you are able to acknowledge and witness. For the uninitiated, simply noticing and releasing a thought with a spark of feeling but no more polluting of the air ways with intoxication or wallowing is sufficient RESPONSE to act as an environmental marker for the Higher Order to gage how things are going down here as the climate changes from Greed to Love. Just as with thoughts, if feelings latch on to you, as if they were you, it is of utmost importance to give them “up”, sacrificed lest they become a big hairy deal, monster-like even. One way to send your feelings up is prayer, another through song. These may sound like thoughts but are not.

Prayers and song are connected to the Higher Realms of the 5th Dimension via Faith. Therefore, one must never pray for what you do not want and keep the mind in positive thought (flowing) when doing so. The negative thought function is when thoughts are caught in the looping process of addiction. Furthermore, it is scientifically proven that Change is more motivated at low levels of stimulus intensity (prayer) than at higher levels of stimulus intensity (emotion), also the basis of Ho’oponopono and the water healing of Dr. Emoto. Meditation is the very lowest level of stimulus intensity and so has the greatest influence upon Change, meaning, Change responds well to this level.

Indeed it appears we are experiencing climate change, changing landscapes and changes in society. But not how you have been led to think of them, to form certain beliefs about. Imagine now, if you can, living in a world whose climate is governed equally by Love and Fear as One, connected to All That Is. Imagine your guides, your well ancestors knowing exactly how you feel as you are feeling it and so sending just the right experience, just the thing you need before the idea of need or problem even occurs to you, just as you experienced in the womb. Indeed the process of Individuation is one of continuous Induction, of moving from womb to another.

Now, you might be wondering, haven’t we been living in a climate of Fear? Perhaps, but Fear sucks away oxygen and so actually impossible to live in sustainably. Love, the breath of Creator, contains oxygen. So the relationship of Fear and Love is not unlike that of humans and plants. For the plants, what we call Fear, what can be dangerous for us, is natural for them. For humans, Fear may also be considered the ozone layer at the outer limits that protects us from the Void. Many cultures have stories of scary creatures that exist at the borders of the outer limits to protect the children from going out too far from the Village, eagles that will catch you for instance. We have already seen, understood, what comes of both the absence of Fear, and facing it upon Stone C.

The “climate” humanity has been immersed for some thousands of years comes with the age of Kali Yuga - what I term, the climate of Greed. This atmosphere contains high levels of Argon, a gaseous element that makes one “inert”, sleepy and inhibits change. This element is used in museums and archives to preserve what are considered important documents like the Magna Carta. It is the same noble gas used in fluorescent lighting, including the new spiral energy saving kind we are warned are dangerous when broken. That this element is in our environment is simply a part of the Earth’s evolution. In fact, research has found that Argon could one day be used to limit brain damage after traumatic injuries or oxygen deprivation. Currently Argone appears to be at work in the hypnotism experienced world wide, manifested as Greed.

There are times one may fear taking on more than they can handle which is most often something that is simply new to them, something “out of the ordinary”. Yet opening to new views brings with it a breath of fresh air, access to the bigger picture that reduces hypnotism. Here doubts and conflicts may arise which externalize as impulses that contravene the Cosmic Law of Love, and so set one back. Yet in the set back does ones trued Sense of Balance return in full, though it may be a bumpy, rather earth-shaking ride. The gift of Balance is to master our negative responses to Life, and in doing so, one brings forth the positive qualities in all forces. As said, the form of negative responses is a loop, which can surely act as a noose! Loops are common in an uninitiated psyche. The initiation of Psyche involves a repatterning of the psychological, thought infested landscape, with the landscape of Nature, a process called Interface. What is termed positive, is spiritual, which does not move in a looping fashion. Your Sense of Balance is fully aware that the psychological and spiritual are entwined and so this process is done one “tile” at time, one bit of lead at a time.

Again, in the language of Alchemy, without the lead there can be no gold. In Nirvana there is no need for alchemy or gold. But Nirvana and its state of mastery comes in steps and stages with specific instructions that must be adhered to by your Understanding as for Awareness to bring you satori. This is the basis of the 3rd Noble Truth; that though a “better world” may be waiting for us, one must first absorb the teachings for it to arise within you. The primary carrier for the teachings is Awareness, which never lugs them around yet has complete access at all times once absorbed.

Awareness comes before Vision. Awareness is what Jumping Mouse experienced when he woke up, where he could “see”, but things were blurry. Discernment as the Sense of Thinking is activated in Awareness as the ability to see when you are acting like a child, when you are getting too busy gathering and collecting, examining. Discernment enables one to see their own flaws, their imperfections, all that core wounds traits that make you unique. And these things are not problems, for we love them all and go about about integrating them in order to be whole. That’s just how it goes. Vision came when Jumping Mouse held on to the wind and it took him higher and higher, into his Self, one that can see all clearly. This “holding on to the wind” came after Integration.

A key deterrent to developing Awareness is to cling to something, to anything, especially the thought that satori will come to you one day. To give some release to the “cling-ons” consider this:

An advanced civilization is fundamentally spiritual, that is,
concerned with the well being of the group instead of the individual.

Do you notice how you can be buttered up by what appears to be one thought as if it and it alone was the truth? Yet Truth, simple as it is, is ever diversified with facts as for the seeker to see both ways. The fact or “toast” of the buttery statement above is that the physical is better suited to care for the individual, which connects us to our animal and plant brethren. Indeed our physical world is COMPRISED of all our relations, the plant people, animal people, tree people, stone people, mineral people etc. Even our bodies are made of the Four Elements. The buttery spiritual is more concerned with the well being of the group, that is, living as one with these other peoples, in full consideration of their needs. When these get mixed up, things get weird, like trying to spread toast on butter. For without connection in the physical, the manifested, there can be no “group”. Keep in mind that all manifestation is based on frequency/level of Consciousness.

Working WITH is the basis of the Art of Integration, and the brushes for this Art are your Values. These Values can paint many things, once separated off from habits. The following guideline from Mahatma Gandhi must be also be taken with a grain of salt:

Your beliefs become your thoughts,
Your thoughts become your words,
Your words become your actions,
Your actions become your habits,
Your habits become your values,
Your values become your destiny.

This is a map of how one becomes addicted to thought as the be-all-and-end-all. When caught in this loop he speaks of, which is centered on the word “your”, as in the individual, there is little room for consideration of others, let alone Great Mystery. We can cut this loop in accessing those Values inscribed on the Heart, inherent not adaptive or adopted. And as these Values come forward for you in this course, your habits become a reflection of them, not the hand-me-down ones. As do your actions, which includes the words that come through you. We can then relinquish thought and beliefs to the “childish” section. You will also notice that the map of Mahatma does not address feelings or emotions, for they are simply off-shoots of thoughts, those tinier veins. Yet for the initiate these are still important, for the world of Reason is a lonely place without feelings and emotion, and feeling and emotion lonely without Prayer. Prayer then calls upon Faith, a conduit for channeling your feelings to the Higher Realms without being taken in by them, just as Peace is the communicative umbilical cord between the Physical and Spiritual, kept flowing by the quantum mechanics of Gratitude.

At times one feels rather an outsider of the processes of Unity. So let us speak to "containment". In the spirit world, every spirit has a spirit helper which has a helper which has a helper and on and on.  Each helper is a container for the one that comes before it. A big fish eat little fish kind of thing of the world-feeding inner nature that acknowledges matter as energy. The human body is a container for alchemically reducing negativity. Your body is your medicine bag, given life by the breath of Creator just as a flute or pipe is by the human breath. It is the Law of Existence that what has been created in Consciousness by means of aggression, violence and greed must be drawn into the human materialized form as for Peace, Prosperity and Harmony to prevail, the negative preceeding or containing the positive. It is as acknowledgment of this Law that the First Noble Truth states, “there is suffering” and the bible states, “woe to the one overtaken by evil”, both statements to procure Compassion, the highest form of intelligence available to humans, to make it so. It should be known that Compassion is the natural state of plant intelligence.

The moon time in women aids in passing negative energy through the body and also the collective, and so highly revered as a potent Ceremony. Unfortunately this way of clearing was misinterpreted and misunderstood as repenting for sins as to produce mass amounts of guilt and shame, more than the women in moon time combined with the escalating climate of Greed could bear. The result has been self-hate and aggression, hostility and anger, presented as PMS or mood swings, results of a problem/misunderstanding not well handled. This also radically affects a woman’s Precious Sensitivity. For all, so long as we do not hoard, become intoxicated or wallow in negative energy, things will go well under the governing force of the Law of Existence. Understanding the power and responsibility of the moon time, by men, women and children will also aid menstruating women in their work, so essential to all our relations. Eventually we can let the moon time go, to be called upon only when reproduction is deemed necessary. Just as it came to Sarah, wife of Abraham, who gave birth to the prophet Isaac, when she was 70 years old.

Each time we sacrifice our precious “knowing”, what we think we know about things, to the breath, to Creator – maker of breath - with the exhale, or exaltation of prayer or sound, we gain back a piece of our Precious Sensitivity, our KA body, that which contains the physical organism. In fact, when one is caught in the negative, a mental loop, it is recommended that one exhale while looking at your feet. When one can surrender feelings and sacrifice what you think you know, you are released of the densely negative burden associated with thinking you have to do it all on your own, that it is your duty, right and privilege to struggle with thoughts and feelings. Struggle is a Right of the self-conscious Adolescent, and you have already had a good long turn with that. When struggle is used past its expiry date, it produces Anxiety. This kind of anxiety is generally “floating”, meaning it is not attached to anything in particular, which not only produces more anxiety but that anxiety is then prone to grab onto whatever might relieve it. Persons in this level of anxiety can easily be manipulated by passing “saviours”.

To move into the place of Adult one must give up Struggle, remove it from your vocabulary and attitude. When you sacrifice Struggle, as regularly as you exhale, you begin to breath life into another of the dormant senses of the Adult, of which Understanding is one, Balance and Aloneness too. As the breadth of your Precious Sensitivity grows in the Adult stage, one can understand paradox. Often the first awareness that comes of an awakened Understanding is the paradox you are not alone yet possess a sense of Aloneness, also referred to as a sense of Nothingness. This multitude of “extra” senses that make up your Precious Sensitivity ensure that one does depend so greatly on Thinking, or even Understanding. Where humans cannot fathom this on their own are there solar eclipses which serve to wipe the slate clean from time to time. At these times one can better understand that God is in Everything and Everything is in God, and the Individuated a portion of Infinity.

Let us now move thoughts, that volatile solution inherent to problems, towards their Right Place, which is transpersonal by nature. The Personality, the Identity or “idea” of your self-image projected onto one by Society, is a favourite entry point for Thought. Personality is also a word used to describe the gift you came here with, your way of perceiving, your Spirit. When a child is born, many in the village are aware of its gift, and the task of Society to nurture and support it, which includes disciple where the gift is abused or ignored.

In Lakota way, one must fit into their personality. In this way one is enabled to play their role in Society and perform the duties and tasks associated with it. In new age language this is referred to as loving yourself and bringing forth your gift. Fitting into your own unique Personality is a part of the Individuation process, prep for fitting into the infinite.

The challenge in this preliminary fitting is that Thoughts will enter through the Personality for fun, for entertainment, creating great distraction from tending to ones spirit, ones gift. Challenges do not require much thinking. Challenges rely on Discernment, which the Sense of Thinking was designed for, not the busy collecting and examining of thoughts. Thought also enters the personality for they have not such velocity, power or audacity upon the True Self, the I Am presence, that which is indigenous, or rather, endogenous, to all; the beholder of our deeper spiritual landscape that gives birth to Culture whereas Personality is a part of Society. Culture does not foster Personality, yet does not exclude it. For Society is also a part of Village life. Consciousness too will reveal itself through the Personality, particularly in one who stubbornly refuses to Know Thy Self willingly, which includes actualization of the personality. In order to actualize the personality, the Sense of Thinking must be relatively clear of thought. Where Stubbornness is a problem, due to its rebellious ego driven spirit and incapacity to listen to others, those who behave like goats may be ignored or ostracized by society, and/or have to endure the samsaric force of their innate rebellious consciousness. To remove stubborn stains of thought that infest the Personality comes this teaching:

You can think yet not make thoughts your aim

Much of these preliminary steps are to clean and clear your Sense of Thinking, as to come back to its truer function of Discernment, the essence of the Rudyard Kipling quote above. Discernment lets things happen as they will and not overthink anything. Discernment affords us to spend some of our time deciding, devising, reflecting and considering, but not letting that process become so involved that you become overwhelmed, lazy or aimless. Discernment assures that we have thoughts as part of a balanced diet of action.

As thoughts are cleaned out, paranoia may be a symptom, for you feel that someone has taken something from behind your back. Paranoia is quite rampant in the 4th Dimension, which the collective of humanity is currently moving through, and can be troublesome when misunderstood. As stated earlier in this step, paranoia can be a diagnostic that Integration is in full swing, which at times can act like a wrecking ball. While paranoia is a guest in your house, remember that all things are tonic in nature. It is only in their excess that things, medicines even, become toxic. In its tonic state, paranoia which will have one stay neither here nor there for everything poses as a threat and so one continually jumps between them as if they are hot potatoes and exhausts the adrenal system, as for one to eventually slow down. Eventually, paranoia may signal that Inertia has taken a room in your Guest House. Inertia carries coyote medicine in that it can have one stay put as for Consciousness to focus upon that which is inert in you, the unchanging living essence. The presence of Inertia is generally very uncomfortable. Under the laws of physics, does not move on, change, until affected by an “external” force. Yet in quantum mechanics the internal is the external. And so, as with all forms that thought can take, as soon as you are Aware, that is, viewing this guest from the perspective of Self, it diminishes, leaves. Some may be caught in the thought loop paranoia can take and isolate themselves with its extended feeling that one does not fit in anywhere. Yet and still, with Awareness engaged, Self lets you in on a little secret: we always fit into God.

Marijuana can make one highly susceptible to Paranoia. It is also referred to as Karma Coma by the Rastafarian, one who believes they are a Self-Realized being - the being that realizes there is no self other than God - and finds Marijuana useful to maintain this relatively purified state. But if one has not truly come to that place Marijuana will keep you well tucked into Delusion. A direct cousin of Confusion, Delusion is confusion that you are God and no one else is. And generally this delusion has one feel it is their “god given right” to do whatever they want. And this leads us to not get along with our neighbours. But get along we must, for the neighbours are God. And our job is to fit in to God, not fit God into us. It is quite something that man has gone to the moon and back, but can’t get along with the neighbours. Yet, as you are a part of Everything, you are IN God and God is IN you, just as the element earth is in you and you walk upon the earth. This is for why it is said, every step you take upon the earth is Sacred. Because being of it and upon it, you are in Harmony. And strange as it may seem, living in Harmony can terrify certain people. Yet here lives the true state of Interdependence.

As a true Medicine, Marijuana is excellent in sedating and moving swarms of bees and can also be used to isolate Fear that may appear as Pain. But if that Fear is not promptly and efficiently handled and shipped back to Right Place or, if there is no pain, Marijuana can prevent movement, keeping Fear isolated in the body/the village and its relative Pain ever dependent on this plant for recognition. Whenever Fear is successfully returned to its Right Place, most often achieved by giving something up, Integration may bring the temporary feeling of emptiness as the I Am fills the hollow bone, the Ancestors penetrating you softly with their songs as to work WITH. Some people consider that they work with marijuana. But the working WITH foundation of the Art of Integration operates the inner landscape.

Many consider the Ancestors something of the past, yet as Life is full circle the ones passed over depend on us to keep their light bodies moving into “higher” dimensions that they may feed them to us. Death is in no way the end of Life, we have merely forgotten this and so forgotten to tend to the Ancestors, to make Ancestors. Becoming an Ancestor is a process, just like becoming a grown up human is. When potential Ancestors are not tended to, those passed over “with no where to go” can become mischievous, hungry ghosts, the underlying cause of most addiction and the trauma that provokes it.

One of the 7 Rites given by White Buffalo Woman is The Making of Ancestors. This is ceremony known by medicine people of the Lakota. But one needn’t be a medicine person to tend to our loved ones that have passed over. When a potential Ancestor gets stuck in a wormhole, by the law of Physics, the only energy that can free them is the release of the negative energy they may have left you with. It is for this that Tibetan music is so loud or “noisy” at times for noise is considered reflective of releasing negative energy, just like the noise in your head at times. When you can release that noise, that “bad wind” for you, you actually become a good wind for your Ancestors. Humans can gather or harvest negative energy but it becomes a burden to them if not regularly “given up” as to be harvested by the Spirits and fed to the Ancestors.

Right here is a major lesson for the Practical Mystic in Know-How as to keep all things moving Right Along. Ancestors Feasts, where we put out actual food for our Ancestors, or offer it to the fire, is another particularly practical way to feed them. We can also help the spirits help us in using the following prayer with sage smudge to send all that does not serve you to feed the Ancestors that they might remember/feed the Kingdom of Heaven to Earth. And in doing so, you do your part, serve your Destiny/Purpose as a human. This prayer also helps change the climate of Greed that comes of holding onto to negative energy for your self, another stubborn deviation from Knowing Thy Self, into the climate of Love. No protesting or petitions required.

Into this smoke does release all that does not serve me
all negativity that surrounded me
all fear that limited me.

Once you have cleared the negative energy given to you by the Ancestors to assist the Ancestors (read that again), Fear tends to lighten up. For Fear is not naturally limiting. It is only when you hold on to it that it is limiting and thus produces more climate of Greed. After the prayer and smoke have returned the negative energy, consider this lovely Spanish Proverb to follow this prayerful action: “How beautiful it is to do nothing, and then rest afterward.”

Smoke has the ability to carry Energy between dimensions via the element of Air. The use of smoke as a cleansing dislodges the blocked energy from the density of the physical. It must also be noted that any plant carries Intelligence even if not burned, or consumed. In ceremony we pray to the element of Air to teach us how to speak respectfully and make beautiful music as medicine for a song or eloquent words are most able to carry that energy into the Spirit World. Air also teaches us the value of being silent together. A friend recently told me he and his friends have Rest Parties. They all get together and just rest. No talking, just laying around together, like a pride of lions in the cool shade of a great tree nurturing the restful alertness of our sense Nothingness that is beyond being awake, asleep, dreaming or even meditation in which the Universal Mind can be felt. In the words of Christ: “Be still and know that I Am God.”

I suggest taking a breather here. A deep inhale and exhale. For we are only 1/2 of the way through this step. At this point you may indeed be asking, “Is there a problem here? The only problem is all this dang reading!” And this is good, for your acceptance combined with objection signals that you have stepped out of the territory of Problems sufficiently that we might address them bravely, that is, without being caught by them.

Why would one make up problems, hold onto/get caught in negative energy? It is due to the dependence of Anxiety, which gets its “fix” in this way. And an anxiety that has no real cause, that is, cannot be pinned down to any one thing, constantly seeks something to attach itself to, even if that thing makes it more anxious in the end, which is the nature of Addiction. And as an addict, Anxiety attaches to just about any thought that might bring temporary relief, regardless of the long term effects. This attachment addiction of Anxiety is the key producer of problems, crises even. For the affect of attachment is ultimately unsatisfying. So, where thought is the volatile solution, in that there is no end to them, problems can be alleviated when Anxiety checks into Recovery. One of the first “drying out” procedures of Recovery is understanding the relationship of Anxiety and goals.

You could set half a dozen goals right now without exerting more than a couple brain cells in the process. Yet every goal has a complicated sequence swirling beneath it like the vortex of a whirlpool. Take your first step towards that goal and instantly you are sucked into that vortex, swirled downward endlessly farther and farther away from your goal until you’ve forgotten what the goal was, and your only concern how to get out of the vortex. It’s kind of scary when you think of it, reaching goals on your own. Not to mention exhausting.

It is good to remember that "healing yourself" can be made into a goal. This doesn't mean we don't undergo certain processes but just don't see it as a goal. Healing is a process, with no particular desired outcome, just as when setting an Intention in ceremony one can never know how it will be met. We say this as a stepping stone away from Intention as well. For Intention is somewhat of a Florence Nightingale of a goal. All goals are taxing on the nervous system, in part due to the effort involved and also, goals have you ignore your original contract with Soul, which has already laid out so much for you in the present moment that you keep unconsciously sidestepping in search of your Purpose, the one inside your feet.

The sidestepping of your Sacred Contract for personal goals is the true “original sin”, which also causes a break in the Sacred Hoop, through which messengers and guides come into the physical realm. The Hoop has been torn farther and farther apart by the social conditioning and artificial intelligence that feed you Desire, as for you to become attached or dependent on it, the cause of Suffering as given in the Second Noble Truth. It is important to note here that to Desire, humans are like flies to swat; that is how powerful it is. Yet taken back in as a part of us, Desire will also swat away all that does not serve. And for this there is The Serpent, that will ”bite” you every time Desire is abused. Yet that bite carries the venom of Guilt and its feelings of worthlessness, not enough. The Serpent so does us a favour - if these feelings come to you it is a diagnostic that you have been entrenched in personal identity, the manufactured, homogenous, insatiable “person” made in the climate of Greed that you took yourself to be. This person is disconnected from Spirit, and so the gift of Spirit, your Personality, is not available to you, nor the role, duties and tasks you are here to perform. And so one may feel lost. This state is what is referred to as Ego.

The common yet holy plant Basil is available to clean any wounds and antidote the venom, simply by being in its presence or as tea. As you get closer to the True Self, which is not only immune to the venom - there is not even anyone to bite. Remember again in the words of Alan Watts: you are under no obligation to be the same person you were 5 minutes, days, years, decades ago.

We will address ego more directly upon Stone B. For now, when ego is perceived, that is, one sees that they are seeking goals in order to prove their existence, the complex and uncontrollable mechanism of the Universe, that fluid spiraling, swirling essence in all things, washes your vestibular system out, dissolving all conceptual boundaries of the primary 5 senses to bring you to your Sense of Balance, the well-being and health of constant motion you so wish to experience but had no idea it is one of your Precious senses. Balance demands that negative energy must be addressed so that the positive energy can come forth. When Restlessness shows up, a wanting of something but not really knowing what, it is diagnostic of your sense of Balance being renewed. Here does Rest, the guard of your own Peace, remind you to keep your Peace as you come back to your senses, all of them, as to be the precious nature of Life.

At times Love will unapologetically make love with Fear where deemed necessary to bring Balance back as the integral and intimate sense that excels in the Art of Integration. Indeed the coming together of dry and wet is the basis of the Sweat Lodge. Balance may be simply expressed as Not getting stuck in what you're stuck on. The experience of this “rebalancing” might come with dizziness, tinnitus, feeling off-balance or simply overwhelmed by the tasks at hand, clear symptoms that you are adapting to Spirit, your most ancient ancestor. By the time you get here, the call of Spirit no longer echoes off the Western Front but comes from the Centre, that which all are entitled to.

The heart is the keeper of the Centre in the human, connected to its very own outlet of Wisdom, with its own rhythm and its own cycles of growth. The physical heart is not merely a pump, but a collection of spiral, helical cells, with an electromagnetic field as strong as any that the Sun can send out. The suns electromagnetic output is able to “fry” existing, man-made electrical systems and electronic devices, what we refer to as technology. But the Sweat Lodge has its own technology, as does the field of the Heart, the Centre.

One could even say that each heart has its own pattern language, yet all connected to the one Source. In story of the tower of Babel, man was cursed with not being able to understand one another, that each would speak a different language. As we are all unique beings, this may not be a curse but an excellent outlet for Personality – speaking how you speak. When we speak through our gift, as our gifts, we are connected to Source, which of itself speaks to each one differently, in a way that only that one can understand, a blessing rather than a curse, once clear of misunderstanding. What this produces is a kind of straight-talk, free of complication. Here is a sample conversation of one “speaking from the Heart”:

“And sin, you man, is when you treat people as things. Including yourself. That’s what sin is.”

And when challenged with, “It’s a lot more complicated than that - “, she replied:

“No. It ain’t. When people say things are a lot more complicated than that, they means they’re getting worried they won’t like the truth. People as things, that’s where it starts.”

Of course, you will want to take this in bit by bit at first, beat by beat, as to eventually turn the beat around, upside down even, as to hear the percussive sound of your feet upon the ground as your own drum beating with the One from head to toe. In fact, there is no other Way upon the hydrological Path of Power, which drips “drops” of Pure Perfection in increments. This is very important to remember. Just when you think, “Eureka, I’ve got it!” another drop from Clarity sends your pool into a swirl. And just so, for excessive perfection can easily erode Love and Clarity not somewhere one can live but a thing that will eventually become one of your dearest friends.

free and rich is the one who wants nothing

We will touch now on Passion, for it is a hot topic. Just as one would not want to be in a room with a drummer pounding senselessly on the skin, so must one mind their Passion lest the convenience driven Desire it has been fed on overtake it. Think of the “body-snatchers” for a moment, or a governmental coup. Or, consider Passion to be Avalon, and Desire the mist. In the Jumping Mouse story, Old Mouse tests the Passion of Jumping Mouse: “Forget your Passion to see Them, (the Sacred Mountains) and stay here with me. There is Everything you want here, and it is a good place to be.” For it is possible, easy even, for Desire to over take Passion, use its flame for comfort and security purposes, but Passion is ever there. Passion is devoted to working with our limitations, Desire is best left to function on its own, with no attachments whatsoever. The death of Christ, that part of the story, is known as The Passion. For the light of Passion is most bright when we are pushed to our limits. Consider now, did Christ wear a crown of thorns or a crown of stars?

One who has not been spiritually initiated into their Understanding can easily be misguided by their misunderstanding of things, or worse. Misunderstanding, without proper guidance, can easily get lost in the milky vastness of Bliss. There are those who might seek the state of Bliss as a refugee camp, leaving the body in times of perceived threat, of crisis, which is an error in Judgment. When the body experiences being left in Crisis for Bliss, it gets hurt by the feelings of neglect and abandon left lurking in the corners and will seek safety in the strangely comforting habit of Ignorance, which will often masquerade as Bliss but is not it. Here one must tread light with the Socratic position of “not knowing”. With repeated bouts of being deserted, the body then becomes sore, tired, dis-eased or in some other way engages more deeply with Crisis. The tactic of Ignorance, that is, ignoring your spirit, also pushes the body and mind further and further apart, in apparent conflict. Not a pretty sight. For the Dark Lords court of Conflict keeps Illusion as entertainment for its own benefit, with Confusion as it jester. Yet too do you incomprehensibly, transcendentally remember where there is Dark there is Light. And the light in this dark is that hurt feelings, feeling offended, occurs when one is attempting to side step “dark” or negative energy arises. One may even turn to Sabotage for access to Bliss, though this never goes well. The proper relationship of Crisis and Bliss is that Crisis drops the “heavens” more deeply into the Earth which takes in its seed and then, under the right conditions, Pure Bliss waters them. If this water is polluted by Ignorance, the seeds suffer and so produce more suffering.

In Right Place, Bliss comes after Enlightenment, just as the realization of Nirvana must come before the directions for getting there. Experiencing your enlightenment as an Adult is both a peaceful and destructive process for at times it may drop its heavenly light into the body more completely as to put aside, displace, Ignorance like mud in a cup under the tap. For some this is experienced as “kundalini rising”, which may come with many uncomfortable states. Yet in the absence of enlightened Adults and excess of over-aged Adolescents suckling on prosthetics inserted into the milky Bliss of Ignorance, must many of our elders endure chronic pain and our children do most of the Remembering while their teen-aged parents attempt to get high on manufactured Bliss. Where there are concerns about injustice and abuse, might one look no further than right under your nose for evidence of it.

Does this feel like a threat to you? If so, the words have hit a chord. When I feel “caught” in my act or trapped in my own darkness, I know Conscience is tugging at me. Conscience does not live with Ignorance, for Ignorance lives in its own filth and Conscience is highly fastidious. Yet as with the Pig that symbolizes Ignorance in the Buddhist texts, Ignorance has figured out it can make filth, move on as if it never happened, and leave it for others to clean up because well, Ignorance either doesn’t care to or doesn’t know how to keep itself out of the mud. Everywhere Ignorance goes there is filth, even if the “pig” that created it is not there. We see this clearly in the piles of computer parts in India, islands of plastic in the Oceans and other such monuments of Ignorance at large. Rather than feel victimized by Ignorance one can be truly Victorious, that is to say, not have things go your way, which is intolerable to Ignorance and its cohort Ego.

Many indigenous people say that one cannot become enlightened. It is true. Just as you cannot become broccoli or potato, yet can you taste/experience it, have it inside of you, assimilate it and even pass it along. No one can be more enlightened than another. No one can chase enlightenment, yet when one swims in it, it is absorbed. Or rather, returns to itself.

So how do we swim in Enlightenment? Here on the West Coast, it used to be that one was initiated into their enlightened Adulthood when they could run in the sand without kicking it up. And just when you thought it was a joke, that it was impossible, there came a brother or sister running beside you without kicking up the sand. No fuss, no muss. Then, once you caught on to this, you had to learn to do it backwards. In the course of taking this course, there will be days you wish you could have done it that way, those times when your Attention is fading into tired, bored, hungry or frustrated. Perhaps this is one of those times, for we are now at the epicenter of Problem, where such feelings often arise.

So here you are, in The Problem, allegorically. Consider now a problem as something horribly bound in misconception and at the same time containing a vile substance, which if released, serves only to perpetuate the problem. As such one must become attuned to disarming “problem” without breaking into its volatile internal sac of "solution", the thinking mind. As said in Martin Prechtel's brilliant story, the Toe Bone and the Tooth:

"…it is the continual implementation of solutions
that give birth to the next litter of problems, demanding solutions."

Approaching such a problem without dipping into the solution is a sticky business indeed, not one for the uninitiated magician. Remember, thought is the volatile solution, the quick fix so hard to resist; that moment of satisfaction you would rather have than go deeper with Awareness. Isn’t it easier to just allow the solution to come forward and go on with our business, our busy examining and collecting, our planning and condemning? It may seem that way, but when the mind gathers experiences according to its own wishes, to what “resonates” with you, Awareness remains very shallow, superficial. Intuition tends to keep a safe distance from you too. And then you are really on your own. Do you recall Mickey Mouse as the apprentice wizard with the broom? He thought chopping up the pestering broom would solve his pesky problem yet it multiplied. Eventually one learns when to apply swords and when Wisdom, or at the least a good dose of its Common Sense, which is surprisingly uncommon in the self-conscious yet fairly synonymous with Intuition in the initiated Conscious Adult.

As you may have already deemed, this Course is not a quick fix, not a solvent to your problems yet a source of Know-How to work WITH all things, as to be master to the thoughts and emotions, the disciples, that are inherent to growing as a Human, which includes the Ancestral stage, so often left out in ones consideration of being human, just as people conveniently take on some parts of the teachings and dismiss others. For instance, the full words from Gandhi are: “you must be the change you wish to see”. Likewise do we present the whole of Black Elk’s experience with Understanding, for the first few lines is not enough to run backwards in the sand, into the arms of Creator.

And while I stood there
I saw more than I tell
and understood more than I saw;
for I was seeing, in a sacred manner,
the shapes of all things
in the spirit,
and the shape
of all shapes
as they must live together
like one being.

We come now to sit in the dappled shade of the long leaves of the Tree of Peace, and watch the shadow and light play, cooperating in the dappled grey. A drop of enlightenment falls from one of the long leaves, both salve and digestive aid for Understanding ones true nature, ones natural state, and thirdly, your part in the whole. These are all distinct parts of each being. For me, when any part presents a challenge or technical difficulties, I remind myself that as an Initiated Adult, struggle has been banished from my attitude and vocabulary, which generally repels the impulse to entertain thoughts, which are fairly docile without Struggle. With struggle no longer in my bag of tricks, I dig into my medicine pouch of Values to address the challenge sent to grow me. My unique 3 Values are deep, playful, connection; one for each of the three parts, which also work in cooperation.

Another cooperative trinity in being human is the three centres: the head, the heart and the gut. These are sometimes referred to as “wombs”, and life as the continuous movement from womb to womb. Most consider this a reincarnation kind of thing, but it is more to point of keeping all three centres fertile, gestating and cleansing. Relying too much on the head will atrophy the other two.

There is still occasion for a problem to pop up for Problems know I know how to work WITH them, how to free negative energy without being getting stuck in the convoluted solution. My primary modus apparatus is to always be well rested. For if I am busily running around my Spirit has a hard time pinning me down, and I dare not approach a Problem without Spirit in the house. We then bring the problem to Enlightenment to be run through quickly, with mercy, ease and grace, just as lightening flashes across the sky. Sometimes this looks like ignoring the words or actions of others intended to “get my goat”, taking time instead to reflect their medicine. Then, what appeared to be a problem naturally ripens in the subtleness of Experience necessary for one to Learn, to develop Spiritually. Most simply stated, always wait for the chemical responses in the brain to subside before you act. What comes forth may not be to your immediate liking, but it is more likely true.

A current favorite technique is that when something is bothering me, some nagging choice to be made or action determined I simply remind myself, it is just a thought. This automatically disarms any solution from giving birth to another set of problems.

If a persistent problem seeking thought comes to you, do not look to your neighbour to see where it is coming from, for this will only send Blame out on “neighbourhood watch”. Look into your own heart for the last time you were at odds with someone destructively – by slander, argument, bullying, gossip, rejection, criticism. Here the scent of phobia may arise, which is the thought of being that thing you are most frightened of, the thing you wish with all your heart you could just make go away and not bother you anymore. This could be spiders for some people. These days there is phobia stirring around Ego. Yet it is Ego that stirs phobia, as a means of continuing to keep one from the Self, which is the primary position of Ego.

For many, phobia is the standard relationship people have with Grief. And this is so for Grief is closely related to Death, the primary phobia in humans. Yet Death is the only thing in life that is certain and certainly a part of the experience of all living beings.

Phobia is also a moon of Mars, that comes into play in trying to keep your counter clean rather than removing the counter you put between yourself and others, between you and Death. Psychologically speaking, the two strongest phobias are the Anima and the Animus, as termed by Carl Jung. Anima is the totality of the unconscious feminine psychological qualities that a man possesses and Animus the unconscious masculine ones possessed by a woman. In other words, a man fears he is a woman and a woman fears she is a man. Away from gender, Anima is Soul and Animus is Spirit. And do these two, thought not dualistic, have a similarly confusing relationship in many folks.

I have to tell you here that the other day, in the ladies bathroom in a Sikh temple, I saw a woman with a full beard. And did it wipe my slate clean, tossing the counter out. Imagine the affect of all those “bearded ladies” in the circus during the time of snake oil, antimony and potion sellers. And then there is the regularity of the eclipses of the Sun and the Moon, which maintain the Tabula Rasa.

With problematic thinking set aside, for thinking really is the only problem, one can see that many things contain Risk, an edge, which must be present for healthy relations in the Gamos/marriage, be it deemed necessary or unnecessary. An unnecessary risk is taken by one stuck in autonomic reaction, a slave to their own flight or fight mechanism - the terribly sympathetic nervous system acting as a lone wolf, disregarding the parasympathetic as if it never existed. This is due to living within the egoic system that is convinced Death is threat. In these days, Ego is so convoluted that a healthy person in society may be perceived as a threat. Such a confused slave, one that thought is was only a master, and not also the puppet, is apt to act with harm to themselves and others. And though your action may not bring obvious harm or hardship to you, that harm will come to someone, somewhere, seemingly out of the blue and so, the risk is deemed unnecessary. Risks must be known, clear, to the one engaging with them. For unnecessary Risk brings very little “health” to the marriage.

Projection can be considered both a form of phobia and an unnecessary risk. Projection wields the aspects of the personal unconscious which can influence for good or ill, make problems and messes or clean things up yet always as a means to maintain the walls/counters one stubbornly refuses to give up, also a form of harm/violence against ones self. Projection is continuously highjacking your shadow. Surely you have seen the trouble come of it yet without problem - something to improve, fix or figure out - projection is impotent. Then, one can rest in the mantra of my life is perfect, at least for a gestalt moment, as for an increment of the highly erosive Perfection to eat away at Projection until it drops your shadow at your feet.

And this is a good thing for necessary risk requires one to step up in the territory of Challenge, which becomes apparent in the absence of problems. The territory of Challenge has four levels:

1. Difficulty 2. Trouble 3. Desperation 4. Danger

It is a grave error to confuse any of these stages but in particular, Difficulty with Desperation, as a reactionary system often does. For in doing so you may prematurely throw yourself (or others) upon the ticking bomb of Danger. The most basic level of Difficulty is forcing life to fit your dead ideas and assumptions about it, a favorite activity of Stubbornness. Here it is good to be centred, keep your shadow at your feet for then it has direct access to your Destiny/Purpose, which always knows the way through the tricky terrain laid out in the map by Gandhi. Destiny is not a talker however, won’t tell you what is there. Generally, your feet and hands will do the “talking”.

If meeting the Difficulty head on doesn’t do the trick, you have the opportunity to learn how to “trouble shoot”. Trouble likes to come after one has attended a “healing workshop” or casual circle/ceremony with good intentions to clean themselves up yet end up burying Trouble rather than nip its shooting invasive bud. If you miss it, Trouble will come at you again and again, like rhizome roots, and continue until it is taken down. What at times may seem like Trouble in the uninitiated is really just two things that are hard to distinguish, as they are, not as you assume them to be, for which Discernment applies the Art of Differentiation. Discernment uses this Art not to distinguish between two things, but to make clear to you that the World, As It Is, appears to be external yet is governed from within by invisible principles. As you master this Art, Trouble is reduced to Difficulty, which is directly related to how you see the World. Now, Challenge is called by your Destiny/Purpose to practice this silent, action-less mystical art, digest and metabolize it, to balance the autonomic nervous system that it become less and less difficult to distinguishing glaring errors from illuminated truths, mountains from molehills, reality from illusion and even discerning which feelings are trustworthy and which distorted by conditioning, illness or effects of scent or pharmaceuticals. And in doing so, Difficulty is disabled and then Challenge itself rests at your feet. And you simply keep walking through it, not turning up any dust in the sand.

Glaring errors are then more apparent as being backed by poor judgment. All judgment is poor for it is derived from the Superiority Tactics of the Victim doctrine delivered by the Conditioned State that encourages politics and top down hierarchy. Generally, if one tactic doesn’t work, the impoverished Judgment will greedily proceed to the next, though not necessarily in this order: Pity, Disgust, Resentment, Competition, Bullying, PC/socially acceptable behaviour and Trauma (the trump card to keep ones wound more important than anything else). What keeps Judgment impoverished, victimized, is that you have forgotten that it doesn’t take much to be happy. And when you are happy, you are a King, a sovereign. In the climate of Love, when Judgment so acts, one can see that these are all clear signs of Conditioning purging for which the best response to keep your course out of troubled waters is to simply be the Witness, which automatically calls upon Compassion. So it is, that the very same action in the climate of Greed can make a mess, yet in the climate of Love, act on behalf of the clean up crew. For just as with Knowledge, Conditioning must be regularly purged.

Conditioning becomes toxic when ones festers in Trouble. As it is said, the best medicine for Trouble is Better to stay out of Trouble than to get out of Trouble. If you do find yourself in toxic Troubled waters, you can "duck" the Trouble, best done by not taking it personally, simply allowing it do what is does as the Witness. Here is a good example of staying out of Trouble, particularly when it pretends to be a problem:

Tagoona, the Eskimo, was ordained as the first priest of his people. One of the white men said to him, “We are glad you have been ordained as the first priest of your people. Now you can help us with their problem.”

“What is a problem?”, Tagoona asked. And the white man said, “Tagoona, if I held you by your heels from a third-story window, you would have a problem.”

Tagoona considered this long and carefully. Then he said, “I do not think so. If you saved me, all would be well. If you dropped me, nothing would matter. It is you who would have the problem.”

If you should find yourself goosed in the good grace of Desperation, know that you are in the presence of a master of Differentiation. In the upcoming story of First Mother and First Father, the drought only “reached the point of Desperation”; and did this Desperation call upon the power and knowledge of her Motherhood to do the right thing, to meet Challenge exactly where the most good could come of it, which required a rather epic transformation of her being. Basically a Challenge is “met”, fulfilled, through union with forces beyond our control. This unification is both empowering, enlightening and also hold the potential for destroying us. Most simply put, problems are molehills. Challenge is the Mountain, like the one you go to for your Vision Fast.

A common calling card of Challenge is Loneliness, a purely psychological state. Loneliness is not solitude. Solitude requires being alone whereas loneliness shows itself most sharply in company with others. In solitude I am "by myself," together with my Self, and therefore two-in-one, whereas in loneliness I am actually one, deserted by all others. Loneliness roots itself in those not feeling at home in this world or the next, in life or in death. And this Loneliness courts Anxiety and its addiction to attachment, and attachment to Desire. A particularly strange aspect of Anxiety is that it cannot permit the existence of people that don’t belong. And so Loneliness and Anxiety make misery for one another. If Loneliness becomes psychologically, deeply set into a Place and its people, it may court the catastrophic aspects of War, and if this does not bring forth the Right conditions in the people, Mother Nature steps in, for she alone can distill the Fear of Death from Danger. Both Loneliness and Solitude are aspects of the Law of the Land, which we will speak more of in Step 4.

Once Loneliness is understood it turns to your Sense of Aloneness. This sense is not isolating from other humans or nature; it is the sense that one can access in which there is NO thinking. And therefore, no problems. The sense of Aloneness is refuge from problems. And as one can understand this you will arrive at Emptiness, which is neither psychological nor a sense, yet often a challenge to stay with.

Sometimes in this refuge you will meet with Despair; that you can never change and you stop trying and even not trying; you simply don’t care, nothing matters. Here you have come to point of overcoming Illusion but may not have the proper “backing” to see it through; to see that your choice/will is mere conjecture of the egoic belief that your will is separate from Divine Will; that to decide on anything is unnecessary. As is attempting to store the information, instruction and teachings given here. That you have read and been read is enough. It will come to you when it comes.

We wish to point out now that the sign of a Good ceremony, which these readings are to some extent, is that everyone feels a wreck afterwards. This is not a difficulty yet a sign that problems or other discrepancy have indeed been focused on and corrections have been made, though not particularly accepted. As in a shipwreck, the keel of your Soul has run aground and so its sails luffing in the wind, a signal to the spirits that there is sufficient Surrender to accept the help called for. Yet and Still, the tide must be right for affective removal from old patterns. At this time the best course of action may be a good giggle, which may be difficult to conjure up but necessary, for does a good giggle, like those often heard in speeches by the Dali Lama, not only tap into the true nature of Reality (which is really quite a hoot) but powers the lighthouse that reminds Fear of its place upon the outer limits. For where the warrior feels fear but does it anyway, is the motto of the true Warrior, the Soul, problem? What problem?

Soul is the key Witness. It is good to understand not only how to work with problems but how they work so that you may be an informed Witness, one with Understanding, which serves as an internal “witness protection plan”. For you may be called to participate in a problem, yet not be a part of it. Yet the Witness is never used as a crutch, nor to employ defense, offense nor force. Another aspect of the Witness is not deciding before they act, for decision is a violent act. And there will be times where the Witness must act. Furthermore, if one decides before they act, the Devil/Saboteur will always catch you, for your thoughts announce you could outsmart Challenge, escaping by making a decision. Yet the moment you stop trying to get away from yourself, from those parts that you are, they are integrated. And the process of Integration clears dependency on brain chemistry.

When one is no longer dependent on brain chemistry for guidance, when faced with argumentative people it is easier to stay out of it. You know not to take the bait for it is saturated in the volatile solution seeking to replicate itself. If you engage with someone who is deluded, then there are two deluded people, and one is quite enough. Here the right condition to exercise is Compassion, which can be soft or fierce. For only Creator can Interfere and Compassion a clear signal for it to be done. These tactics loosely follow the law of parsimony, which is excellent at reducing a Challenge into its manageable essence.

Parsimony is a kind of eloquence that courts voluntary simplicity. It comes of applying focused thought, rather than compulsive over-thinking, by making the fewest assumptions about any given thing or event. It is true that everything you receive you have asked for, you prayer for. It just may not look like you assumed it would. Assumptions are a primary producer of problems in the first place and voluntary simplicity gives Spirit space to speak of the Abundance of Peace and Joy that it is, even within our Challenges.

Acting with parsimony are you strengthened to work with the challenge that is now before you while you come to your senses. The Senses and the Psychological are different. For instance, Loneliness, being psychological, has only illusory experience. Aloneness, being a sense, has true experiences. The body does not distinguish the difference readily and too much illusory experience can separate ones head from the other 2 “wombs”. Eventually, as one becomes more attuned with ones Precious Sensitivity, the reunion comes naturally, if not wholly unexpected, spontaneous - as naturally as the breath flows in and comes out, a Thought coming and going, without thinking, the basis of Intelligence.

Intelligence is beyond Thought, in the non-conceptual realm. Intelligence only applies Thought if Thought is called for. With Intelligence one can look at a situation without leaning heavily into the sense of Thinking and its illusory experience, which kind of like convenience or junk food, is not particularly good for you. Accessing Intelligence, one is not left feeling life is something they don’t belong to, fit in with; they know that being alive and human is not a disgrace, a problem, but an obligation to live well inside the mothers ribcage while the universe dances on our bones. Now, as we move out from the shade of this Tree, your drop of enlightenment absorbed, consider this:

Let happiness be your companion rather than your goal.

In the video entitled, I'd Rather Be you get a glimpse at the humour of Truth and learn that Happiness is the base of all existence; the state when all your spiritual needs have been met so that your words and actions can benefit, be of some use to as resources, yourself and others. If at first you don’t succeed, follow the instructions. You may feel sad, frustrated or angry as difficulty lays itself before you time and again and still have happiness with you. Indeed taking on happiness as a companion can be a Challenge for many. And at the same time, you can be happy for what you have, what has been given to you by the maker of Breath which knows all your needs.

A human need is simply that which voluntarily wishes to be met by its creator.

The Spirits do respond to whining, but only to a point, for it is understood that a need about to be met can get very nervous, anxious even, like the bride awaiting her groom in the bedchamber of the Wilderness wondering if she’d made the right choice, which becomes ever heightened as one comes towards the climax of Self-Realization. Needs get nervous because they live in the autonomic nervous system, which like plants in pots, can only grow so far. As the nervous system itself is being transplanted wider pastures, Needs do not necessarily grow big but relax, chill out! In the meantime, many people will want to smoke, tobacco or marijuana, as to quell the nervousness. This can be useful for a time while the mirror disengages but at some point these too must be given up in order for Need to be clearly met. Smoking can “cure” a need, which is to say, preserve it until it is ready to be met. But inevitably it must be voluntarily given over to a Progress, which cannot be stopped. Once you resign your needs to Creator, all desires, addictions that bring suffering will be alleviated, which is a big word for being happy with what you have, which gives your Spirit permission to come closer in.

May all beings be Happy. Come what may.

In a way, this is the Great Solution, fueled by the Four Noble Truths rather than the squeaky wheels of the Mind. All right, your Awareness is tweaked towards being in Right Relation with Challenge, which requires Right Relation with Thought. This relationship must be clear, unattached, unsticky for Challenges are powerful aids to move us through the stages of human development. In moving in this direction, away from problem-solving, may you also surrender your attempt to memorize these instructions yet devote what you have pick up here to your Understanding, which has direct contact with the Network of Life that takes care of Life.

There is a Buddhist prayer, Eh Ma Ho, which suggests all things eat and are eaten in the Continuum of the All One, the Network. In the Network you will become more and more adept and adapted to how things work in radical interdependence and how Life is more than happy to take care of you as its own. Surprising to many, acceptance of being taken of by Life, is the basis of Mastery.

Many people have the wrong idea about Mastery. People have the wrong idea about lots of things but this does not change the nature of those things, it just makes them difficult to work with, like a moonbeam in your hand. Yet the Inner Shaman is in all, and in Sincerity, opens ones heart to the Universe.

We will now prepare to leave this step in understanding Problems as being mostly created by the mind, by thought, with the exception of the 5% that are meant to be solved for the development of the Adolescent. A Challenge is something that comes from beyond the mind, beyond conceptual thought. And meeting Challenge requires the stripping of your autonomic suit, just as a seed must shed its shell to grow.

Let the words in this step you have taken unfold within you now, expanding the inner. Do you remember the last words of the ancient medicine people of the Amazon?

"The Word is and will Ever Be."

What would have an ancient culture steeped in oral Wisdom say such a thing? For one, Word cannot be lived in externally. Notice too now how the inquiry here is focused by the key word “What”, for does why create the most stationary bicycle imaginable. It is good to question things, as taught by the Toltec. This teaching also backs question, that a question may be able to withstand 10,000 answers, and still be a question. So have we been given not only why but what, when, who and where as to fortify the questioning and form a revolutionary movement in Certainty that has nothing to do with the answer being to your liking.

As we come to a close I remind you that every question is impregnated with the answer, yet it is the question that is the Immaculate Concept already within you, not the answer. And that once again, enlightenment can help you through some of the toughest challenges and technical difficulties Life can dish out, not a means of escape from Life but invitation to it. And no matter who you think you are, you still have to do the dishes.  You are both puppet and master. This will require hard work, sweat and perhaps tears to understand your part. Yet all in all, and in doing so, you will find the Peace growing in the heart-field, that untouchable connection with Spirit. If this feels confusing or overwhelming, take comfort in this:

One day you won't understand what it was you didn't understand.

We invite you now to clear your palette with the Word Song by the Young Spirit singers. As you ask, what do the words mean, allow them to speak to your heart, which they incurably will. For real meaning comes not from the mind but the Heart. I asked an elder once who was teaching me a song, what was the meaning of the words, and he told me, “just keep singing it until your heart tells you.”

 

Kindly reread the inquiry posed at the beginning of this step, then proceed to the Story of First Mother and First Father in the download section.

Resources:

Alan Watts – various recordings
The problem of having a heart - chaninicholas.com
World-feeding inner life – Stephen Jenkinson, Orphan Wisdom
Whirlpool of goals – The Night the Bear ate Goombaw, Patrick E. McManus
Question everything - The 5th agreement, Don Miguel Ruiz
Loneliness – Hannah Arendt
Tagoona – I Heard the Owl Call my Name, Margaret Craven 

                                                 Soon it is time to Meet with the Mentor.
                                                                      Walk this Way.

Resources:

Alan Watts – various recordings
The problem of having a heart - chaninicholas.com
World-feeding inner life – Stephen Jenkinson, Orphan Wisdom
Whirlpool of goals – The Night the Bear ate Goombaw, Patrick E. McManus
Question everything - The 5th agreement, Don Miguel Ruiz
I Heard the Owl call my Name - Margaret Craven

Original content under common copyright Ne'ith Arrow/Changing Mind 2021
neith@changingmind.co           www.changingmind.co