On Our Way Home

      “There is a light in the core of our being that calls us home ..."
       John J. Prendergast. “The Deep Heart – Our Portal to Presence.” Sounds True, 2019

     “The center is the focal point that stands for whatever is of enduring importance – the core, the meaning, or the hub around which life evolves. For archaic humanity, the creative mound represented the feminine principle, the womb of life and the center of the world. Later, as the masculine principle emerged, the mound was surrounded either by upright stones or an enduring central pillar, symbolically connecting earth and sky as the world’s axis, ensuring the continuity of life.
     A human personality, initially an ego, that cannot journey toward the center of its own being, the Self, is left unconnected, at the mercy of unconscious compulsions and motivations as well as social conventions. Paradoxically, however, these same drives may create the suffering that reflects our inner healer’s efforts to get us into sufficient conflict to begin the voyage home.
     An ancient legend speaks of the old Hebrew shepherd who, in speaking of his small village on the edge of the desert, remarked, ‘I am happy living here.’ Then he added, ‘But if I saw Jerusalem, I would not be happy anymore.’ His simple words are filled with a natural wisdom.
     Jerusalem, Delphi, Mecca (the eternal cities), Mount Fuji (the central mountain), the Holy Land, and other numinous places have been considered symbolic centers of the sacred world. Ironically, many people among us live – metaphorically – in small villages far from their center, on the outer fringe of their personality, and seem quite happy there. Others of us seem chosen by life to be thrust into an inner journey. We become seekers. Initially, we seek peace and happiness. But once we see Jerusalem, once we see through ourselves to the center, we cannot be happy again where we were. We see beyond the external, material destination we are likely to have been seeking and become aware that the pilgrimage is eternal – and inner. We may even feel alone in this crowded world, with only our inner Hidden One for a companion. However, if we can learn to continue, turning our (often reluctant and too rational and willful) focus inward to cooperate with this inner healer, then we begin our pilgrimage to completeness, to wholeness, toward feeling at home in ourselves and in the world.”
     Bud Harris. “The Journey into Wholeness: A Jungian Guide to Discovering the Meaning of Your Life’s Path.” Daphne, 2020. 

      Mindfulness practice is "cultivating a certain kind of intimacy with the core of our being."
Jon Kabat-Zinn PhD

The Way It Is              by William Stafford

“There's a thread you follow. It goes among
things that change. But it doesn't change.
People wonder about what you are pursuing.
You have to explain about the thread.
But it is hard for others to see.
While you hold it you can't get lost.
Tragedies happen; people get hurt
or die; and you suffer and get old.
Nothing you do can stop time's unfolding.
You don't ever let go of the thread.” 

 

Chakras & Core Strength

     “We are heading into a new era, one in which humanity is being initiated into a higher state of being. That higher state is not a fairy-tale transformation that happens with the wave of a wand but a slow metamorphosis in how we understand the life force: how it is organized, how it flows through us, what it means, and how best to utilize it.
     One aspect of this initiation is to fully occupy our bodies and live in the center of our core – our sacred center – the vertical column of energy that rises from base to crown. This axis mundi, which Leadbeater calls the ‘axis of creation’ or ‘rod of Meru,’ is our personal connection between heaven and earth. In ancient myths, it is said that doomsday will approach as heaven and earth become disconnected. In a world where doomsday is precariously close, we are called to this core connection as a way of healing, not only ourselves, but also our fractured world in which spirituality and everyday life have become dangerously dissociated.
     The core is common to all living things – every blade of grass, every tree, every person’s vertical channel, including the core of our legs, arms, fingers, and toes. To come from our core is to occupy the most direct access to Source that we have: the Source within, aligned between heaven and earth.
     The chakras exist as sacred centers strung like jewels along the axis of our vertical core. When the chakras are aligned, we become that connection between heaven and earth. From this place we are capable of co-creating heaven on earth, from a place of consciousness, wisdom, sensitivity and compassion. Perhaps with this connection intact, we have a means to avert doomsday and continue the evolutionary experiment into its potential glory.
     Few people actually live in their core. Because it is the source of vital, divine energy, we learn at any cost to protect it as we grow up through the twists and turns of childhood. We create necessary defenses, but they come with a cost. Later, our vital life energy becomes more engaged with those defenses than with the precious core we were trying to protect! We no longer feel our aliveness, our vitality, our raison d’etre. The chakra system brings us back to our core.
     Leadbeater explains … the important link between vitality and health, how we are nourished by the light of the sun from above and the rising serpent power from the earth. It is the confluence of these two forces above and below that energizes and awakens the chakras. In a world where we remove ourselves from the earth and shield ourselves from the sun’s rays with walls and rooftops, spending the bulk of our time indoors, it is no wonder we are ailing. 
     The chakras come from the Tantric period of yoga philosophy, circa 500-1000CE. Tantric spirituality is a weaving of dualities: heaven and earth, masculine and feminine, inner and outer, mind and body. The emphasis is on incorporating everything rather than rejecting any one aspect of reality in favour of another. In this way, the chakras represent seven essential elements of our existence – not that the lower chakras are bad and the upper chakras are good, but that each level represents both light and shadow and must be balanced in order for us to be healthy, thriving individuals.
     The chakras represent a map for our healing, a profound formula for wholeness and a template for transformation. They describe the soul’s architecture, just as we study the bones, muscles, and organs of the body’s physical architecture, the chakras enable us to study the subtler energies of the soul. Like the human face, this architecture varies from person to person, yet it has elements common to all.
     The elements of the chakras – from bottom to top, earth, water, fire, air, sound, light, and thought – describe a spectrum of creation from the physical world to pure consciousness. The energies of the soul run both ways, in the rising current of liberation that comes about as matter transforms into subtler energies of consciousness, and in the descending current of manifestation that begins in thoughts or ideas and gains density as they progress downward into the manifested plane. The chakras are stepping stones along this pathway.
     As human beings we need to have both the upward and downward channels available. We need to be able to liberate from limiting or destructive patterns, which is a function of consciousness we call realization. To realize is to see with ‘real eyes,’ to see what is real, the energy behind the material representation.
     We also need to be able to manifest our visions into reality, to actualize our life purpose and take higher consciousness into its full outward expression to evolve the world around us. The chakra system is a map for that process. It is at best an integrative system, one that can bring us back into wholeness once again.” Anodea Judith PhD
       C.W. Leadbeater. “The Chakras. An Authoritative Edition of the Groundbreaking Classic.” Quest Books, 1997.