Tag: balance

Being True to Your Soul Self

© 2010 Anne S. Katzeff / Artist
© 2010 Anne S. Katzeff / Artist
It’s challenging to be your authentic self in the world today. Marketing seems to have taken over every aspect of life. There’s been a blurring between business, sports, and daily life in the personal coaching and self-marketing phenomenon. People seem to want to be “cheered on” to greatness, yet is it authentic, soul-guided greatness, or a “greatness” defined by social values that tout fame, financial gain, and material acquisition above anything else?

Ultimately, life is not a business (or a sports event), and marketing yourself without awareness can lead to inauthenticity and an unhappy life, both at work and at home. In author Susan Cain’s recent book Quiet, she discusses the cultural bias in favor of extraverted behavior in our society. In schools, homes, and workplaces across this country, individuals are encouraged—nay, pushed—to be outgoing, super-productive team-players. Quiet contemplative solo time is heavily discouraged, and those who do their best creative work alone or who like to balance social time with solitude often find themselves as either uncomfortable full-time group participants or total outsiders.

We have lost touch with the value of authenticity, a life lived in alignment with the soul’s deepest flowering, unique to each person. It’s time to “get real,” as the saying goes. There is no cookie-cutter prototype for the best way to work and live on this planet. We need fluid social/work structures that allow for variation and individuality. Some of the most creative innovators in history did not fit in but walked their own path to greatness. It’s time we recognized this and allowed each person the freedom to expand and grow in his or her own way. Hardened social paradigms stunt individual expression and authenticity. Fluidity and flexibility open the door for all people, whatever their creative style, to be their soul selves in the world.

Of course, we’re facing a monolithic business prototype that values competition over cooperation, profit and product over people, and that too has to shift. So many men and women are caught on the hamster wheel of achievement and acquisition, but as the planet begins to rebalance itself, these values will change also. Status and material objects do not equal happiness. It’s like the old Frank Capra classic film You Can’t Take It With You, in which friendship, family, and community are found to bring greater joy (and much more fun!) than corporate boardrooms. Capra had a penchant for making those kinds of films. It’s a Wonderful Life has a similar message: money is valued only when it’s shared and can help others.

So what exactly is “real” in our rapidly changing social matrix today? Real is looking deep inside yourself and living from that soul place. There is a quiet voice within that will guide you to your own creative expression in life. In listening to and living in alignment with your inner spirit, you will “be the change you wish to see in the world.” You don’t have to wait for validation from outside. In being true to your soul self, you will inspire others to do the same, and together we will co-create a reality that fulfills our greatest dreams.

Awakened Goddess

Photograph © 2013 Peggy Kornegger
Photograph © 2013 Peggy Kornegger

Last month, October 24 was Global Oneness Day, an online event created by Humanity’s Team and growing larger with each passing year. Speakers such as Jean Houston and Riane Eisler talked of a renaissance of oneness consciousness all over the planet and of historically suppressed feminine energy emerging through both women and men. The world balance is shifting from otherness to inclusion; from power over to power within, shared with all peoples. The time of the goddess has come.

In the feminist movement of the 1970s and 1980s, the goddess was often invoked in the form of Gaia, or Mother Earth, and the divine feminine, whose power and presence had been written out of patriarchal religions. We looked to heretofore-disregarded female attributes such as emotion, intuition, compassion, tenderness, and unconditional love as those that would help to heal the violence and separation of a male-dominated paradigm. We envisioned a transformation in consciousness itself, from either/or to both/and—the end of battling opposites. Our visions and voices were often ridiculed and undermined, but slowly shifts began to take place.

Today, we are seeing a new wave of awareness sweeping through the world. Both men and women are acknowledging the importance of female energy, infused with gentleness and empathy instead of dominance and hierarchy. Yet the soft but powerful divine feminine is an energetic essence not to be underestimated in its ability to shatter obstacles and redefine so-called human nature. Look at Diana Nyad, who at 64 years of age defied skeptics and swam 103 miles from Cuba to Florida in 53 hours, after multiple failed attempts. Her mantra, “find a way,” was pure goddess. Then there’s 16-year-old Malala Yousafzai, who was shot in the head by the Taliban because she spoke out against banning education for girls in Pakistan. After a miraculous recovery, she continued her activism, including addressing the United Nations on education for all children in July of this year. Again, goddess energy personified.

Many new thought leaders are also challenging old limitations in their visions of what is possible for women and men. Thirty-five-year-old spiritual catalyst Panache Desai (who often refers to himself humorously as a “goddess in disguise”) speaks of the necessity for addressing shadow aspects of the patriarchy that we have internalized (need for control, “better than” attitudes, intimidation/bullying), so that we can embrace the divine feminine and come into masculine/feminine balance and harmony within ourselves. Strength combined with compassion in each person. Whole human beings meeting whole human beings on equal footing and experiencing oneness. This is the long-held dream, being expressed and embodied by men as well as women in this post-2012 era.

A couple of weeks ago, I had an exceptionally vivid dream of an old abandoned church being torn down by a demolition crew and the steeple toppling into my back yard, crashing into an altar of crystals, stones, and tapestries I had created there. I rushed into the yard, only to find a young man in a dancer’s leotard with a colorful scarf around his neck carefully picking up pieces of crystals and placing them on the grass. Could there be a more obvious symbolic representation of the fall of patriarchy, the end of all previous paradigms, and the birth of something entirely new, with only small crystalline reflections of our inner shining souls to guide us? What is on the horizon is unlike anything that has come before. We are truly standing on the edge of greatness: the full flowering of our authentic selves, unpolarized, unlimited, and free. May the all-encompassing love of the goddess open our hearts to infinite possibility and global oneness.

Unplugged and Reconnected

Not long ago, I decided to unplug myself from technology for a month. I took a mini-sabbatical from computers (including all email and editorial work), TV, and radio (I don’t own a cell phone). It was with a huge sigh of relief that I did this. My days had begun to be filled with such constant busyness that even finding time to meditate or take long walks seemed difficult. When I stopped sitting for hours in front of the computer, my life opened up all around me.

At the same time that I closed the technology door, I opened another door—to the natural world outdoors and the world of spirit present everywhere. Outside in my backyard, I gardened, read, meditated, or just gazed at passing clouds in the sky or the sun on the flowers in my garden. I often felt transported to another dimension where only infinite variations of light were real. Life seemed as fragile and precious as a flower petal or an inhaled breath. There were moments when all I felt was gratitude for the gift of being alive.

In my journal I wrote: “We have this one lifetime to live in a human body, to look through human eyes and see the beauty of the world. I just want to drink in the wonders all around me, to feel in my heart each exquisite detail of flower, leaf, and cloud. I could look at the sky forever and never come to the end of its magnificence. Every bird and butterfly and bee is a tiny miracle. In the swirling center of each flower is a sacred universe. I am so blessed to have this life on Earth. I don’t want to miss a thing. I don’t want to lose a second looking at a computer or TV when the world and all its breathtaking beauty is just outside the door.”

Along with the wonder and awe came a deep connection to the living spirit that existed in the natural world all around me. The spirit within me embraced the spirit everywhere outside of me, and I stepped into a profound experience of oneness that expanded with each passing day. I found that within each exquisite detail of the universe that I perceived with my physical eyes was an invisible thread that led to the infinite Source of all things. William Blake described this perfectly: “To See a World in a Grain of Sand/And a Heaven in a Wildflower/Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand/And Eternity in an hour.”

So did I renounce all technology for the rest of my life after discovering “God in the details”? No, of course not. We live in a human world that has manifested global communication via the Internet. If it doesn’t overtake your life, it can be a wonderful vehicle for experiencing worldwide interconnections. The key is balance, as in all things. I still check my email, visit favorite websites, and even listen to spiritual webcasts, but I’m now more in touch with when it’s time to turn off the computer and walk out the door into nature’s paradise.

To Do or to Be?

Recently, a friend and I were talking about how to handle the polarity between doing and being that many of us carry inside of us. We’ve been raised in a culture that emphasizes effort, trying, achievement, and success in material terms. The work ethic and the drive to constantly do pervade our society. On the job, unpaid overtime has become routine, and low-paying positions often force people to work at two jobs to make ends meet. Multi-tasking, email, and social media fill up all our “free” time, and friends and family are seen on the fly.

Even outside of mainstream culture, among those who are seeking to change the status quo to something more humane and truly livable, there is a certain push to be active, busy, involved in something. During the current period of major Earth changes, people’s experience of accelerating time also contributes to the frenetic need to keep moving—just to keep up with the hours that are rushing by!

Yet cracks in this compulsive busyness are appearing—possibly because we have run ourselves to the wall with the 24/7 modality. People are turning to things like meditation and yoga because they are quite literally burned out. Often their bodies stop them before their minds do. Headaches, injuries, and dis-ease of all kinds pop up in our lives to show us that all is not well. We are forced to slow down and find a way back to health. When we stop filling our lives with events and activities and instead focus on self-healing, doing takes a backseat to being and allowing.

Regular meditation or yoga practice helps individuals make this mental shift. The breath is of prime importance in both. Students learn to allow the breath to flow in and out without effort, without holding. In some traditions, they learn to watch the breath and just be in the quiet inner stillness. Eventually, with practice, people learn to carry that letting go to their daily lives, allowing events and emotions to pass through them without judgment or clutching, just as the breath does. Doing in this context arises from the quiet, centered space of being, not from polarized trying or effort.

The key, of course, is reaching that balance in a world that is skewed to emphasize just the opposite. But that’s why we’re here. The world is evolving, and we are evolving. We’re living the transition, learning how to embody the new human BE-ing, how to be conscious spirit in physical form, effortlessly flowing with the energy of life.

 

Article in Awareness Magazine

My article, “The Inner Eye: Balance in a Changing World,” is in the May/June issue of Awareness magazine (California publication). Visit their website to view the article online:
http://www.awarenessmag.com/ezine_mayjune-2011/index.html. Click on the magazine cover, turn to p. 19, and zoom in to read.