Repost: REMEMBER PETE BEST!

I'm reading a book right now called "THE WISDOM OF NO ESCAPE," by Pema Chodron. The book starts out like this:

"There's a common misunderstanding... that the best way to live is to try to avoid pain and just try to get comfortable."

One of the things the book is about is "saying yes to life," which includes saying yes to all of our feelings, including sadness and pain. It reminds me of something that I say often to people in a different way - that being tired, being sick, having issues to be worked on is not an excuse for not living your life and doing what you really love to do.

This in turn reminds me of Pete Best, the original drummer for the Beatles before Ringo Starr. Ever hear of him? Exactly. Pete was in the band right before they were discovered and hit the big, BIG time.

How it happened was Pete called in sick for a 2-week stint that fateful year, and Ringo sat in for him... and, you know, the rest is history.

Whew! Pete calls in sick. Ringo subs for him. Beatles get discovered with Ringo. Ringo becomes Ringo, and Pete best is... well, Pete Best.

Do your thing, folks. Do what you really want to do, what you came here to do. Take care of yourself, yes, love yourself, yes, but don't wallow or squander the preciousness of who you are.

Repost: I NEED MY PAIN!

In one of the STAR TREK movies, the fifth one I think, "THE UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY," there was a rogue Vulcan who could use his mental powers to relieve a person of all their psychic pain. He could take away your long-held grief or chronic fears or self-doubt with one simple Vulcan mind meld. Quite desirable, yes? Not to Captain Kirk. Nope. He refused the treatment, defiantly saying: "I need my pain!"

Kirk goes onto to explain to his weaker comrades that our pain is part of who we are.

Kirk: "Pain and guilt can't be taken away with a wave of a magic wand. They're the things we carry with us, the things that make us who we are. If we lose them, we lose ourselves. I don't want my pain taken away!"

Well, Kirk does border on the masochistic there, and from my perspective, he still needs to work on his psychopathy, but his point is well-taken, nonetheless. Avoiding feeling pain (or having it "magically" - i.e. falsely - taken away by drugs or distractions) does not serve our life purpose, which is to become fully ourselves.

This morning, I found an excellent piece on the Huffington Post on this subject entitled:
"Pema Chodron: Reality Hurts? Relax. Use Your Discomfort." by Jesse Kornbluth

Here's a great quote from it:

"Life is hard. Don't wait until you 'get it together' to work at being your best self."

I have said this to many people many, many times. Our issues, our "problems," our pain and fears, do not have to stop us from having an evolving and expansive life and doing what we love to do. In fact, our problems are not our problem. Our judgments of our problems are our problem.

Including our judgments about our pain and fear.

Many of us react reflexively to pain, sadness or fear, as if their presence in our body or psyche automatically means something "bad" is happening. But no. Nature built in the capacity to feel those feelings, just as our ability to feel joy and pleasure are innate and instinctual. We have tear ducts, remember? There are times when we need to cry to release a build-up of sadness from a loss, for example. It's totally natural to do so, as natural as needing to urinate from a build-up of fluid in our kidneys.

Likewise, pain forces us to focus on a part of our body or a part of our emotional life that requires attention. Again, nothing bad is happening.

And as far as "getting it all together" before proceeding to seek out the love, abundance and creative expression you desire? Forget it! You'll never be perfect... because you're alive! Perfection is an illusory, static state, not real and not attainable, except to the degree that you can realize that you are already perfect in your imperfection!

Remember, I'm not talking about passive masochism here, folks, or oral laziness. Accepting your pain is not the same as creating and attracting pain from a character structure, and relaxing is not the same as collapsing. Take action regardless of your current struggles is what I'm saying. You never have to be paralyzed.

As I laid out in my piece from my classes on character structures, at the core of our distortions are the gifts of our Higher Self that we came in with, that we're meant to actualize. (See ALL OUR HIGHER SELVES by PL)

I'll give the final word on that to Jesse K:

"What you hate about yourself is just the flip side of your specialness. Yeah, your life is an interesting, smelly, rich, fertile mess - and that's what makes you human."

ARE YOU REFUSING TO CASH IN YOUR LOTTERY TICKET? READ THIS: "THE BIG LEAP!"

I wrote about a must read book a while ago, THE BIG LEAP, by Gay Hendricks. It's all about what Hendricks calls "The Upper Limit Problem."

This is a very, very important subject for people who have already done some significant work on themselves, have accomplished a degree of self-awareness and emotional connectedness, and may be somewhat successful in the areas of love and work already, yet are nonetheless resisting taking that full leap into an even more complete and actualized new life, into what Hendricks calls "The Zone of Genius." This is a place that is beyond competence, even beyond excellence. It is a place of inspiration, where our abilities to love and create and experience life totally are so expanded that we actually fear it and want to put a lid on it - thus the "Upper Limit Problem."

In my post, JUMP INTO YOUR NEXT LIFE, I likened this syndrome to having the winning lottery ticket but refusing to cash it in. I am really glad to see this being written about in a book.

Here's an excerpt:

"What Is The Upper Limit Problem? The ULP is the human tendency to put the brakes on our positive energy when we've exceeded our unconscious thermostat setting for how good we can feel, how successful we can be, and how much love we can feel. The essential move we all need to master is learning to handle more positive energy, success and love. Instead of focusing on the past, we need to increase our tolerance for things going well in our lives right now. If we don't learn how to do this, we suffer in every area of our lives."

This subject is also addressed quite eloquently in a Pathwork Guide Lecture: THE GREAT TRANSITION IN HUMAN DEVELOPMENT

The Guide talks about our resistance to becoming fully happy, even though we have done so much work to attain that very happiness. It's almost like we never really expected that the hard self-work we've done would actually work! OOPS!!

Here's the Guide:

"At the very beginning of this path you learned to recognize your faults, your weaknesses and your shortcomings on the most superficial and obvious level. This recognition was not easy, because you were untrained and unused to any kind of self-observation and self-honesty. From that stage onward you learned to explore deeper levels and find the greater subtleties of your nature.
The second major phase of this path dealt with your complexes, your images, misconceptions, and your unconscious confusions and conflicts.
Now comes a third major phase on this path. For those of you who have already gained an overall understanding about your inner problems... and how the human soul struggles against this! How afraid it is to leave a state of unhappiness for a state of happiness and security! How foolish of you to fear, deep within your hearts, that in leaving the old world and attaining the new you have to leave something precious behind."

Check out the book and take the Big Leap, folks.

TODAY'S QUOTE: "GOOD-BYE, G-SPOT!!"

"Without a doubt, a discreet anatomic entity called the G-spot does not exist."
So says Dr. Amichai Kilchevsky, a urology resident at Yale-New Haven Hospital in Connecticut, and lead author of the review, published Jan. 12 in the Journal of Sexual Medicine.

Well, there you have it, folks.

You know that special internal spot in women that loves to be massaged in a deliciously rhythmic way, either by fingers, lingam or battery-operated toys?

Doesn't exist! That's what the scientists say.

And those amazing orgasms women sometimes have if and when those spots are massaged just right?

Just your imagination!

Oh, yeah and did you know that the sun revolves around the Earth?

THINGS CAN'T FIND YOU IF YOU'RE NOT HOME!

"It's only when you invalidate whatever your process has been that you actually add more time. Many of you are impatient to be somewhere other than where you are and that's exactly what makes you take so long. You really don't need to be impatient- the only reason you are impatient is because you think you need to be patient.  It's because you're not enjoying where you are right now- so the sooner you allow yourself to let where you are right now to be exactly what it needs to be, the sooner you validate the present- then you enjoy the present- because if you're enjoying the present you don't desire to be anywhere else. Because no where else is any better, it's just different. And as soon as you stop needing to be somewhere other than the now you will find your life accelerating, because something else will than be able to come through you, through the present. Things can't find you if you're not home! The only place you exist is in the present- so the more you focus on 'where I'd like to be in the future…where I was in the past…' the less you are in the NOW the less likely it is that things that need to find you will find you and the slower things will take."

       Bashar

YOUR ORGASM IS IN YOUR STRIDE! (PREVIOUSLY POSTED AS: "HOW YOU CUM IS HOW YOU ROLL!")

Alexander Lowen, originator of Bioenergetic Therapy and coiner of the term "body language," famously said: "The body never lies."

I knew from a young age that Lowen was right. Perhaps because it was a calling in me to ultimately become a therapist who worked bioenergetically, I would notice, even as a kid, that people's body types, posture, facial expressions, etc., always revealed something about their personalities. As an adult, when sexuality and such things mattered significantly, I also realized with a fair amount of certainty that I could assess a person's sexual vitality simply by scanning their body and energy field.

Well, a recent study published in the Journal of Sexual Medicine was written about in an article entitled: "What A Woman's Face And Walk Reveal About Her Sex Life And Family Plans."

Here's an excerpt:

"When it comes to sex, a lady never tells. But according to a recent study, simply walking across the road could be enough to give away her sexual prowess. Belgian scientists believe they've found the key to guessing how many orgasms a woman has had - and apparently it's all in her gait. The research suggests the more 'energetic and free' a woman's walk, the more orgasms she's experienced in the bedroom. 'A woman's experience of vaginal orgasm may be discerned from a gait that comprises fluidity, energy, sensuality, freedom, and absence of both flaccid and locked muscles,' conclude the two professors of sexology. The researchers questioned a small group of women about their sexual behaviour. They were then observed from a distance as they walked in a public space. Their movements were then analysed by two sexology professors, who were unaware of the women's sexual background. The study was published in the Journal of Sexual Medicine. Unfortunately, if a woman has a 'stiff' walk, it could mean that she's more refrained when it comes to sex."

Of course, this all applies to men as well, but the bottom line here, folks, is that you can judge a book by its cover when it comes to sexual energy and personality because it is perfectly on display in the body language of the person. That is why you still need to meet a potential date in person before you can decide if they live up to their profile on-line.

And it's not about what size the hips, butts or noses are, or the amount of cellulite for that matter. It's about the energy flow.

As I've written about many times on this blog, sexual energy is the most potent force in the human physical form, and it is extraordinary in its ability to revitalize, energize and even heal whatever ails you.

Have a great weekend!

REPOST: "FEAR IS EXCITEMENT WITHOUT THE BREATH!!"

That quote was from Fritz Perls, founder of Gestalt therapy.

And it's a beauty!

So, what does it mean?

Well, when explaining this to patients, I'll usually start by describing what happens in the body when we are excited or exhilarated: adrenalin starts pumping. This serves to focus your attention on the pleasurable circumstance by heightening the senses, encouraging your body and mind to continue moving towards the pleasure. Cool, right?

Yes, but... fear also causes adrenaline to be secreted, so that in situations of actual danger, your senses will be on high alert, enabling you to quickly engage in a fight or flight response. Unfortunately, because of early life experiences and associations, we can mistakenly react to pleasure as if it were something frightening. This is so embedded in us that is almost at the level of a reflex, and therefore, almost impossible to control.

Almost.

There is one action that can decrease the fear reaction in the body, and it sounds so simple or cliche as to almost be unbelievable - breathe. Yep. A few deep breaths can reduce the fear state and actually bring you back to the pleasurable feelings.

Here's Gay Hendricks from his book, THE BIG LEAP, a good read for every advanced student of happiness:

"When scared, most of us have a tendency to try to get rid of the feeling. We think we can get rid of it by denying or ignoring it, and we use holding our breath as a physical tool of denial. It never works, though, because the less breath you feed your fear, the bigger your fear gets."

I believe that the breathing works because adrenaline needs to be used quickly and discharged through action, and if you actually don't have to discharge the energy by fighting or running away, you can discharge the excess hormonal energy through deep breathing. In other words, breathing through your fear is meant to be taken literally as an antidote to fear, and a way to get back to pleasure.

WHO WOULD CUT OFF THEIR HEALTHY BREASTS?!

Breathe.

Then think about it.

Then read a description HERE of the Psychopathic Character Structure.

Understand a few things - having a Psychopathic Character Structure doesn't automatically mean you're a serial killer or a gangster or some other kind of "sociopath." Sociopathy is a particular subdivision of psychopathy at the extreme end of the scale of this structure. Many human beings in socially acceptable occupations are psychopaths. Nonetheless, even those people with this personality distortion who may never commit a legal crime are capable of doing heinous things... like cutting off a pair of healthy breasts.

Every person I've ever known with a primary character structure that is psychopathic has an extraordinary fear of death. Extreme emotional numbing, which is the main defensive process that distinguishes psychopathy from the other character structures, leaves one incapable of experiencing the fullness of life. This is why psychopaths are known for craving intensity and drama and "larger than life" experiences. 

Not feeling fully alive is what leads to a fear of death, because no one wants to die numb. 

One of the major legal crimes committed by our medical establishment is the drugging of so many people- euphemistically called "pain management" - in the final stages of their lives. This reckless use of power has sadly made dying in a state of numbness the norm for so many. 

Another heinous crime, the one now making for all the tabloid headlines, is calling the drug, slash and burn atrocities of mainstream medicine "healing" or "life-saving." 

Really, Doc?! 

Removing healthy body parts in anticipation of a possible future illness is the best you've got? 

Folks, look, first of all, the body never lies. (See "The Truth About Everything, Part Five")

This is an excerpt from the Psychopathic Character Structure chart:

"BODY STATUS

- Body is “designed” to serve the purposes of dominating or seducing and can take almost any form, following whatever main image the person is primarily attached to (i.e.- athletic and powerful, youthful and innocent, sexual and alluring); generally, however, there are two types of body formations typical of this character structure:
1. The “overpowering type” which is inflated on top, “blown-up” looking, with a barreled chest, broad shoulders, and large head, while rigid and small in the pelvis, with small buttocks and thin legs, particularly the calves; or 2. The “seductive type” which is inflated in the pelvis (but numb to feelings there), with broad hips and hyperflexibility in the back, while deflated and immature in the chest area;
- Armoring is particularly marked in the chest, diaphragm, legs and shoulders;
- Eyes are highly charged, often large, and frequently gleaming or sparkling; in the dominating type, the eyes are penetrating and compelling; in the seductive type, they are soft and intriguing, cunning, dreamy or sleepy looking (“Bette Davis eyes”);
- Often, there is a pronounced split (correlates to a lack of integrity in the personality) between the head and the body (mature body, with a small child-like face and head, or visa versa); this split is facilitated by severe tension at the base of the skull and in the shoulder girdle, which holds the head tightly in place (“I must never lose my head.”);
- Arms tend to be immobilized and away from the body (due to the inflated chest and severe shoulder girdle tensions);
- Feet tend to be “pulled off the ground” and may be small; calves and thighs may be short and thin, even when the torso is heavy;
- Physical illnesses are often not felt or manifested until late in life due to extreme willfulness and numbness (later life problems may be in the hips, prostate, pelvis in general, or the heart);
- Spine may be twisted or fused and immobile;
- Chronic areas of tension: base of the skull, shoulder girdle, chest and rib cage, including the diaphragm, waist and abdominal muscles (which are often hard and clenched to pull sexual energy away from genitals), pelvic area in general, genitals specifically."

See anybody you recognize there? 

Secondly, the actions of a person both follow the body and control and create the form the body takes. This is also from the Psychopathic Character Structure chart:

"OPERATING MODES OF THE MIND, EMOTIONS AND WILL

- The will is powerfully exerted to control others and to control feelings; feelings are alive in the body, however, but denied recognition by the mind;
- Feelings and the body are denigrated and not trusted, so neither are the external senses; therefore only what’s in one’s head, only one’s own ideas in the moment, are treated as valid and real;
- Power rather than pleasure is sought from life;
- The mind is the servant of the will in this structure, so reasoning can be dramatically inconsistent, though capable of brilliance; arguing both sides of a situation or mixing lies with truth is common if it suits a manipulative purpose to gain power or be “right”; one’s own lies are often believed; there is also a tendency to poor judgement and an inability to learn from mistakes;
- Pain is numbed, and genuine feelings are denied, but dramatic emotionality and false feelings are acted out to achieve some purpose, like intimidation or seduction;
- Fear of being wrong or of submitting to the will of others is extreme and is powerfully denied;
- Intuitive capacities of the mind are formidable, with very strong abilities to read what is going on inside of other people, although the understanding of the meaning of what is going on is often very distorted."

Here's a an excerpt from a piece by Daniela Drake, MD, in today's Daily Beast entitled: "Why I’m Not Having a Preventive Mastectomy" - 

"My genetics suggest a high risk of cancer, like Angelina Jolie. But I’m not convinced that preventive surgery is a good idea. This is supposed to be patient-centered care. But it feels more like system-centered care: the medical equivalent of a car wash. I’m told incomplete and inaccurate information to shuttle me toward surgery; and I’m not being listened to."

Read Dr. Richard Schulze's take on this matter HERE. Here's an excerpt from the herbalist himself:

"And I am telling you right now, that in a decade or two, surgically cutting off healthy breasts because someone tests positive for the BRCA1 gene will be seen as a huge horrific medical mistake."

Duh.

THE TRUTH ABOUT EVERYTHING, PART TWO: ALL LOVE IS UNCONDITIONAL!

That's right, contrary to one of humanity's most common misconceptions, all love is unconditional. In fact, there is no other kind of love.  If it's conditional, it's not love.

Human beings spend lifetimes trying to figure out ways to "get" love, or more of it, from lovers, friends, parents, children, etc., even from ourselves. We contort ourselves by suppressing what we believe to be unacceptable feelings and thoughts in order to get more love. We force stereotyped behaviors upon ourselves in a futile effort to be more worthy of love. We try in desperation to accept substitutes for love, substitutes like attention, admiration, praise, and end up still feeling empty, even when we are showered with those things. Why? Because... there are no substitutes for love.

One of the essential features of love, besides being unconditional, is that it is freely given, in direct proportion to the giver's capacity to love. To whatever degree the channel for expressing love is open or closed in any individual, that's how much love you can receive from them, depending then on how open you are to receiving love. Period. End of story. 

You can't earn more, no matter what you do. 

And likewise, you can't be less deserving of love due to negative behaviors, thoughts or feelings. That's right. You may be less appealing to spend time with if you are acting out negative impulses or remaining unconscious to yourself, which is why someone can leave you, yet still love you, but you will never be less worthy of love based on your actions.

Take a breath on that one, folks. The deal is if your actions, whatever they are, are judged by you to be proof of your unworthiness, you will close off to receiving love as a result, love that might actually help you heal what was ailing you that made you act out negatively in the first place. Another way of saying this is that our belief in our own "badness" is what leads to our behaving badly and our belief in our own unworthiness is what leads to our experience of lacking love in our lives. 

In childhood, which is where we initially develop these illusions about ourselves and love, we start out in a state of natural "purity," so to speak. We expect to receive love in the same confident way that plants sprouting up from the ground expect to receive sunlight. When a child, organically dependent on adults totally for several years, does not receive the love that it needs to become fully self-actualized, it cannot conceive that the source of their suffering and lack is that their parents are flawed. A human child would be devastated if faced with the reality that its parents are not self-actualized enough to channel the amount of love said child needs to flourish. So, the next most tolerable thought had by that deprived child (all of us on Earth, by the way, in the time period we've been in) is: "It must be my fault. If only I can figure out how to be more worthy, I will get what I need."

And of course, it never works.

It never happens, because the issue was the inability of the unactualized love-givers in early life to give more. Nonetheless, well into adulthood, human beings continue the fruitless efforts to become more deserving of love, or more satisfied with its substitutes, until or if one finally does the self-work necessary to become self-actualized and able to access the unconditional love of our true Higher Self for our physical/emotional self. This unconditional self-love then becomes the basis for actualized love between adults, which is shared, not "earned," not co-dependent, not conditional.

Here's a quote from the Guide:

"Blocks and prohibitions of true fulfillment exist because within the adult personality, the infant still claims fulfillment according to its mode.” (It's "mode" being to try and make itself more worthy through illusory efforts at self-perfection.)

On the website of the Pathwork Guide Lectures do a search for the word "love." HERE and you will find a wealth of material on this subject.

HERE'S a link to a piece written by me called, "LOVE JUNKIES? MAYBE IT'S NOT LOVE!"

Give yourself access to what is inherently yours, folks, the unconditional love that already exists within you for you, by doing whatever it takes to open the channel.

You deserve it... just because you do!

Repost: "LEARNING TO LOVE YOUR HATE ON MOTHER'S DAY!"

Here's one from the FPL archives:

I have perhaps been hard on mothers over the years of writing on FPL, its true, but invariably my criticism has been in the direction of urging mothers to take better care of themselves, to focus on their own self-acceptance and seek gratification in their adult life. I have tried to encourage mothers to trust nature more, and to trust their kids, without trying to control or "fix" everything.

In that regard, Donna Fish, a psychoanalyst writing on the Huffington Post offers a perfect Mother's Day gift entitled, "Love and Hate in the Time of Parenting." It beautifully informs us that having feelings of "hate" for your kids at times is not only normal, but beneficial, if experienced consciously and without guilt.

Here are some excerpts from Donna:

"I want to help all you parents out there learn why and how it is vital to embrace your intense feelings of hatred at times towards your kids. Don't feel guilty. This is not to give yourself a free pass, or a rationalization, but rather to let you know why in fact it is a vital part of teaching your children how to tolerate ambivalent feelings. Part of being a human being and part of relationships.
"I promise you, this is not coming only from the Mom perspective of how I feel at times when I am in the biggest fight with my kids. It comes from the training I have gotten as an analyst, when I was told by one of my best teachers: 'good enough is not only 'good enough', it is vital to help kids tolerate disappointment, and learn to hold onto us in their minds in the face of their own anger and hatred."

I love that! I have said that many times to mothers - "Good enough is good enough." Perfect is not only not an attainable goal, it is not a desirable goal. One of the biggest and most important tasks of growing up is learning how to accept all of one's feelings, especially the negative ones. And children, like the little sponges that they are, learn by example through absorption. If you feel guilty for every moment of anger, sadness or fear you have, your kids will pick up on that guilt, and incorporate it into their evolving personality. They will then treat their own feelings as suspect, not legitimate or acceptable.

Here's more from Donna:

"Now we are talking primitive feelings here, right? But name me an intense relationship that doesn't involve love and hate, and I will say that is not intimate. Or deeply involved."

Exactly. In interpersonal relationships, you cannot hate someone you don't love and expect love from, nor can you love someone without having feelings of hate at times. But experienced in a clean way, the moments of hate are not a problem.

Here's one of my favorite passages from Jane Roberts' extraordinary channeled "Seth" book, "The Nature of Personal Reality:"

"Left alone, hate does not last. Often it is akin to love for the hater is attracted to the object of hatred by deep bonds. In its natural state, hatred does not initiate violence. Love and hate are both based upon self-identification. You do not bother to love or hate someone you cannot identify with at all. Hatred always involves a painful sense of separation from love, which may be idealized. If you hate a parent, it is precisely because you expect such love. A person from who you expect nothing will never earn your bitterness. Hatred, then, is a means of returning to love, and left alone and expressed, it is meant to communicate a separation that exists in relation to what is expected. Often you are taught not only to repress verbal expressions of hate, but also told that hateful thoughts are as bad as hateful actions. You become conditioned so that you feel guilty when you even contemplate hating another. In this case, you will exaggerate all those differences from the ideal, and focus on them predominantly. But it requires only a determined and honest attempt to become aware of your own feelings and beliefs, and even your hateful fantasies will return you to reconciliation and release love. Love, therefore, can contain hate very nicely."

How beautiful is that?!

Back to you, Donna:

"Learn to love your hate. I am always drawn to other irreverent moms like myself, who are willing to be upfront about their angry feelings, and the emotional intensity that can come up in parenting.

"Most importantly though, we do need to model for our kids, that, in the face of their tantrums, or anger as we don't give them what they want, that we can hold onto their love for us and we remember how great they are even when they are behaving so badly. That gives them a way to soothe themselves and hold on to soothing feelings to help them develop that tool to prevent fixing it with drugs, alcohol, food, etc.

"Simple. Direct. Don't be afraid. It passes. Teach your kid it is not the end of the world and you know they still love you, as you do them even when you or they 'feel' the hatred.

"I know we don't like to use that word.

"But hey, we are all human. If you can feel it, you don't have to act on it.

"Happy Mother's Day!"

HAPPY MOTHER'S DAY!!

HOW YOU DEFINE IT IS WHAT YOU GET! TODAY'S QUOTE!

“Understand that no matter what anyone else’s intention is towards you, you always, all of you, have the opportunity to decide that only a positive effect will result for you in your life regarding any experience because your physical reality is only the product of how you define it, and if you define it in a positive way, you’ll only get a positive result no matter whether someone else has a negative intention towards you or not. That’s how it works. That’s physics!”  
Bashar

REPOST: BORN AGAIN WITHOUT DYING?!

This post is about the notion of reincarnating in the same lifetime, in other words, "dying" and being "reborn" in a single lifetime without having to go through physical death or birth.

Of course, if we're talking about reincarnating in the same lifetime, we're already taking it for granted that reincarnation in the "usual" way, by dying and coming back into physical form through birth again, is a given. For clarity's sake, let's also accept that the purpose of reincarnation is to sort of reset the soul's journey through the venue of physical existence in a time continuum in order to accomplish a particular task by living a life, then dying, then being born again.

Make no mistake, the process of "regular" reincarnation is no day at the beach. Dying, but even moreso being born can be a real drag! Why? Because no matter what level of development you were at when you died, you still have to be reborn in physical existence as a helpless baby, in a state of complete ignorance, with amnesia about all that came before. And if it's not bad enough that you can't remember all the work you did in other lifetimes, even worse is the reality that you have to have parents again! Noooo!!!

On the other hand, reincarnating in the same lifetime is also quite a challenge. To accomplish it, you must do whatever it takes in terms of self-work to fulfill what you came here to do. That means no true inner desire in you is ignored and no blocks are left undealt with. Every inner belief is confronted, all supressed feelings are released, and the ego and childish self-will are surrendered to the adult and higher self. Believe me, I have literally known more than a few people who have said, when faced with that level of work, that they would rather die. And they have.

However, for those of you who relate to this, who feel that you are at a turning point in your life where you can hunker down and spiral down and out through your final years of life, or you can choose to turn everything upside down and start over again in a whole new way, this lecture is for you.

Okay, here's a marvelous section of a Pathwork Guide lecture on this subject, spelled out much more eloquently by Eva Brich and the "Guide:"

"A person who is truly on a path of accelerated development can, and frequently does,
literally reincarnate in the same lifetime. As I have explained, you plan a life task for yourself before
incarnation. With the aid of spiritual advisers, you plan a certain environment and certain
conditions, and set certain goals of fulfillment as a task for yourself. Many, many human beings
barely fulfill this task; many leave physical existence with the task unfulfilled and must return in a new embodiment to try again, perhaps under different conditions. This you know. This I have discussed. But another, quite different phenomenon is possible. And that is when a human being fulfills the task and is ready to take on a further task that would ordinarily await a new embodiment, after
the person has spent some so-called time not in the body. On an accelerated path, a new incarnation can be undertaken without leaving the old body behind and creating a new incarnation.
Thus, a laborious change and break in consciousness (normal death) can be bypassed if the personality is truly devoted to give all of itself to its own expansion and to fulfilling a seedplan that ordinarily would be activated only in a new incarnation. It can be done within the same life span. The life that would have been terminated earlier can be extended, and the new seedplan can be 'taken out' and become the task within this life span. Or, a life that might have continued in certain circumstances -- according to the old seedplan -- completely changes in feelings, expressions, experiences, environment, and task.New talents may manifest, and old ones maybe expressed differently."

Whew! What does this look like? It looks like a lot of endings first. Relationships, careers, habits - suddenly none of the old things you've held onto so dearly work for you anymore. You have to let go of almost everything that constituted your life as you've know it. This is hard and scary, and a lot of stalling and hesitation occurs when a person reaches this point. But I have to say, I've had the pleasure of witnessing a handful of people arrive to that border and perservere in crossing it.

Here's the Guide again:

"A path such as this one you have chosen is indeed a very rare and intense one. Some of you
may already connect intuitively with a complete change in your life experience, so that other
potentialities that would have remained dormant in the incarnation you were born into can now
come to the fore. With less development, these potentialities would remain to be expressed only in
a future lifetime.
This change is a wonderful occurrence. It is an acceleration of the organic movement. And in
this extended period of energetic influx of the Christ consciousness, there are more individuals
opening themselves to this change. When you do not shrink from it, when you trust it and go with
it, you can indeed bring forth a second incarnation within one embodiment.
I suggest that you practice active meditation and visualization in which you trust change as the
most desirable, positive, brilliant, and joyful phenomenon, which you want to go with and not stem against. A further suggestion has to do with the familiar. You feel safe in a familiar territory, even though this territory may actually be less safe than the unfamiliar one. So you frequently remain in a constricted and confined circumference to avoid the imagined danger of the unfamiliar."

Yes, this is the librarian in "The "Shawshank Redemption." Remember him? He was in prison for so long that in spite of the confinement, when his time was up, he became deathly afraid of freedom. The prison walls became embued with feelings of familiarity and safety for him, while the open expanse of a free life was the threatening unknown. Tim Robbins character, on the other hand, in a metaphor for the whatever-it-takes energy, chipped through the stone wall for years, broke through that, then had to wade through "five hundred yards of shit" to finally get to freedom. Morgan Freeman's character is us at the turning point. He's done his hard time, and now has to choose: go back to the known element of prison again or follow Tim Robbins to freedom and the great unknown.

Here's the Guide:

"Living a full life always means stepping beyond the old fences and making new territory your own familiar ground, in which you soon feel as comfortable as in the old. Realizing yourself means feeling comfortable in a new self-expression. That is the task. And only the first few whiffs of the new experience are unfamiliar. Soon the new becomes the familiar, and you expand your circumference; you expand the territory for your psychic 'at homeness' until finally all the universe and all states of
consciousness are truly your own, intensely familiar. Then you are one with the universe."

Amen!

THE TRUTH ABOUT EVERYTHING, PART FIVE: THE BODY NEVER LIES!

"The Body Never Lies!"

First coined in mass consciousness, as far as I know, by Alexander Lowen, creator of the mind-body-emotions therapy process known as Bioenergetics, this simple, direct statement  should change everything in the same way that the other Truths listed above should. What Lowen extensively demonstrated in several seminal books, including his first, "Language of the Body", was that our physical bodies "speak" openly and clearly, continuously and unequivocally to us and to others. If you want to know the state of a person's inner life, beliefs and attitudes, even their emotional, physical and psychological history, you can literally read their body language like a book.

We all have this knowledge. To a great extent it is coded into our everyday expressions. Someone said to have a "stiff upper lip," which means able to endure hardship, does indeed have a thin, tight, not supple upper lip, indicating a history of early oral deprivation. Someone who you experience as a "pain in the ass," does in fact cause you to squeeze your buttocks together to ward off their intrusive, "anal" tendencies, reminiscent, perhaps, of some early toilet training issues. "Tight-fisted” (stingy), “tight-mouthed” (secretive), “shouldering responsibilities” (bearing burdens), “holding your head up high” (being proud), and on and on, these are not mere metaphors or analogies. These expressions about personality traits show up in actual body expressions and deformations, which are incorporated in our defensive systems and character structures.

It must be a calling of mine in this lifetime to be working in this area of body language, because even as a young boy, I was aware that people always looked exactly like who they were inside, even if on the outside they tried to cover up with a mask. All children initially have this awareness, but they are unfortunately taught to deny what they see. For the purposes of my path, I never suppressed this awareness, even though I did not have the most enlightened parents, by any means. Interestingly, I've recently rediscovered the Ian Fleming "James Bond" novels, which I was an ardent reader of as a young adolescent. What I was surprised to find out in the current reading was that Fleming/Bond was an astute reader of body language, often describing someone's probable history and present-time intentions in their body configurations. A person might be described as having a "cruel mouth" or "proud breasts," in spite of other outward attempts to show the opposite.

So, what are the ramifications of this Truth, that the body doesn't lie? Well, for one thing, it puts our masks in perspective, doesn't it? You see, only the mind lies. We can fool ourselves, and attempt to fool others, with our thoughts and words, but in fact, our masks cannot actually hide our inner self from another who wants to see us. It can only, to some degree, hide our inner self from ourself. Others might agree to go along with your mask, if you go along with theirs, but know this - if someone wants to see who you are, they can do so with impunity, despite your best efforts at deception. That's what made James Bond such a good secret agent. It's also what makes for good therapy. A good therapist is a tuned in reader of body language, and an accurate mirror, basically someone who is willing to see and reflect back what is visible but denied by the patient. The same can be said of a good friend, a good parent, lover, etc.

Another ramification of this Truth has to do with our own attitudes towards our bodies. If you "don't like" your body or judge it negatively, it is an indication of your being out of alignment, being in a state of untruth. A significant book that I used for my class segment on body language, "Molecules of Emotion," by Candace Pert, demonstrates that all the way down to the bio-molecular level, when we are in truth, no matter how difficult to face, we come into a state of health and alignment. Conversely, when we are not in truth, we are in a state of dis-ease.

Furthermore... to not like your body is irrational. Your body is merely a living reflection of your inner life, and metaphysically speaking, your body is always a perfect expression of your soul. To blame your body for its condition it is like blaming a mirror for what you see in the mirror. If you hold anger in your body fat, if your muscles and skeletal system are twisted, rigid, inflexible, etc., it is simply you letting yourself know what you are going through inside. The opportunity in the reflection is for you to love and have compassion for your journey, and to know yourself better.

So, give it up, folks. Anyone who wants to can see who you are and what you're going through. See yourself. The amount of effort it takes to create and wear a mask is enormous and it has no practical purpose whatsoever. Really. Whoever loves you, loves you in all of your glory, in spite of what you believe to be your "imperfections." 

We can see you. Relax.

WANT A BETTER RELATIONSHIP? ENJOY SOME SOLITUDE!

A few days ago, I posted an excerpt from an article about a book, "DAILY RITUALS: HOW ARTISTS WORK", that extolled the virtues for creativity of frequent walking.

Another section of the book talks about the equally important need for solitude in the creative life:

"If you want to do prolonged creative work, you're going to need to figure out a way to avoid the demands of society, at least some of the time. Most artistic endeavor requires stretches of solitude. That's why so many artists get up super early or stay up super late—only then, when the rest of the world is asleep, are they guaranteed not to be interrupted by family, friends, visitors, or telephone calls."

"Anne Rice, when she’s writing a book, says she needs four hours of unbroken time each day, and that to get this, she must be ruthless about turning down appointments and social obligations. 'Because you won’t get those four hours if you’re spending most of the day worried about getting to an appointment and back,' she said. 'A lot of people don’t understand it. They think, ‘Well, I only want to see you for three hours. Why can’t you write the rest of the day?’ But it doesn’t work like that. What you have to do is clear all distraction. That’s the bottom line."

Last summer, I wrote from Fire Island about the importance of solitude and separation, and not only for the purposes of creative work, but also for the purposes of self-work and for the health of our relationships. Here's Mark Epstein, my favorite Buddhist psychotherapist, on the subject:

"Clinging is as much of a problem in lovemaking as in the rest of life. In order for sexual relations to be deeply satisfying, there must be a yielding of this clinging in a manner that actually affirms the unknowability and separateness of the loved partner. It is the peculiar convergence of awe and appreciation with pleasure and release that characterizes the best sexual experiences. Separate and together cease to be mutually exclusive and instead become reciprocally enhancing and mutually informative. There is wisdom in this state, not just raw instinct."

So, folks, to foster the health of your creative life and your interpersonal life... spend some quality time alone!

WANT TO GENERATE CREATIVE WORK? TAKE A WALK!

"If you're trying to generate creative work, you should really consider taking a daily walk."

That's a quote from an article in Slate Magazine on several creative geniuses who relied on long walks to free up their creativity. While the article is mainly descriptive, and doesn't offer much in the way of deep dynamics, it touches on something that I regularly prescribe to the people I work with - TAKE A WALK!

Just as I often recommend taking a nap to refresh the body and soul, and recommend writing in a journal to keep in touch with one's inner life, I equally suggest walking as a way of grounding the body energetically. Putting one's feet on the ground (barefoot is especially good) and moving the body gently through walking almost immediately reduces anxiety and clears the head of repetitive thoughts. Naturally, that process then makes room for creativity to flow through the mind and body.

Spring is here, folks. Get off the couch. Shake off the winter blahs, breathe, absorb some Vitamin D... and take a walk!

REPOST: ERIK ERIKSON ON THE STAGES OF ADULTHOOD!

This is from Erikson's famous work: The "EIGHT STAGES OF THE LIFE CYCLE." It was rare that psychologists wrote about adulthood in the same way that the stages of childhood were explored in such depth by so many. Yet, we do not stop developing once we reach adulthood, which Carl Jung once said doesn't really occur until we are around 40 years old, and since fifty is the new forty, well... it's probably not too late for most of my readers to become adults!

Following are excerpts from Erikson's book about the three stages of adulthood, as he saw it, that I used for a class I taught on adulthood.

"6. Intimacy and Distantiation Versus Self-Absorption – It is only after a reasonable sense of identity has been established that real intimacy with others can be possible. The youth who is not sure of his or her identity shies away from interpersonal intimacy, and can become, as an adult, isolated or lacking in spontaneity, warmth or the real exchange of fellowship in relationship to others; but the surer the person becomes of their self, the more intimacy is sought in the form of friendship, leadership, love and inspiration. The counterpart to intimacy is distantiation, which is the readiness to repudiate those forces and people whose essence seems dangerous to one’s own.
7. Generativity Versus Stagnation – Generativity is primarily the interest in establishing and guiding the next generation, although there are people who, from misfortune or because of special gifts in other directions, do not apply this drive to offspring but to other forms of altruistic concern and creativity which may absorb their kind of parental responsibility. This is a stage of growth of the healthy personality, and where such enrichment fails, regression from generativity to an obsessive need for pseudo intimacy takes place, often with a pervading sense of stagnation and interpersonal impoverishment. The mere fact of having, or even wanting children does not itself attest to generativity.
8. Integrity Versus Despair and Disgust – Only a person who has in some way taken care of things and people and has adapted to the triumphs and disappointments of being the originator of others and the generator of things and ideas – only that person may gradually grow the fruit of the [prior] seven stages. [The state of] integrity is the acceptance of one’s own life cycle and of the people who have become significant to it as something that had to be and that, by necessity, permitted of no substitutions. It thus means a new, different love of one’s parents, free of the wish that they had been different, and an acceptance of the fact that one’s life is one’s own responsibility. It is a sense of comradeship with men and women of distant times and of different pursuits who have created orders and objects and sayings conveying human dignity and love. The possessor of integrity is ready to defend the dignity of his or her own lifestyle, knowing that an individual life is the…coincidence of but one life cycle with but one segment of history, and that all integrity stands and falls with the one style of integrity of which he or she partakes. Lack or loss of this accrued integration is signified by despair and often an unconscious fear of death. Despair expresses the feeling that time is short, too short for the attempt to start a new life and to try out alternate roads to integrity. Such a despair is often hidden behind a show of disgust, or a chronic contemptuousness. Integrity, therefore, implies an emotional integration which permits participation by followership as well as acceptance of the responsibility of leadership."

TODAY'S QUOTE ON "GENERATIVITY!"

"Generativity is primarily the interest in establishing and guiding the next generation, although there are people who, because of special gifts in other directions, do not apply this drive to having offspring, but to engaging in other forms of altruistic concern and creativity which may absorb their kind of "parental" responsibility. This is a stage of growth of the healthy adult personality, and where such enrichment fails, regression from generativity to an obsessive need for pseudo intimacy takes place, often with a pervading sense of stagnation and interpersonal impoverishment. The mere fact of having, or even wanting children does not itself attest to generativity."
Erik Erikson

THE TRUTH ABOUT EVERYTHING, PART SEVEN: THERE IS NO "ORIGINAL SIN!"

As with all the other Truths About Everything, truly understanding the implications of this one changes things significantly. The idea of "original sin" is a novelty concept of the Catholic Church, an organization that also specializes in sinning, though not very originally or coincidentally. It usually follows that the more you seek to suppress something, the more driven you are to act out the very thing you are suppressing. Of course, the belief in some kind of inherent "sinfulness" in human nature is certainly not limited to Catholics.

Even psychology-minded critics of religion like Sigmund Freud, the father of psychoanalysis, believed that human beings were "bad" by nature, that is born with inclinations to be aggressive, competitive and selfish, and that these tendencies would plague us all of our lives. In his book, "Civilization and its Discontents," Freud lays out what he believed to be the unavoidable conflict between our primitive desires and impulses, and the need to behave in a socially conscious and cooperative way for the good of society, a conflict which ultimately leaves us... well... discontented.

The truth is, however, that the Church and Freud are wrong. There I said it. Blasphemy, eh? Okay, so let me qualify a little...

It is true that human children are basically savages for the first 5 years of their little lives. By civilized standards, little kids are greedy, sadistic, violent, narcissistic, impulse ridden, ruthless, and pretty much incapable of true empathy. It isn't until around age 6 or 7, when most children start desiring to have a pet to care for, that kids begin developing some small amount of empathy. However, because little children are... well... little, they can't do a great deal of harm to society, so they are given a fair amount of leeway by adults going about the business of socializing and civilizing the little Neanderthals.

Furthermore, it is certainly true that adult human beings as a whole have a history of violence and destructive acting out on a massive scale. No other species so wantonly attacks and kills their own like we do. And we don't just kill when we feel our survival is threatened. We kill out of pride, lust, envy, over differences in philosophies, spiritual beliefs, sexual orientation and skin color. Whew!

So, didn't I just validate the Church and Freud? Human beings from the get-go seem to be pretty... bad! Yes. But... no. You see, we've have made things a lot worse by believing in our own badness, by even developing such a concept. 

Linear human evolution, as we think of it, began at a very animalistic level, yes, where violence, as such, was for survival purposes as it is with most animals in nature in this particular line of reality. However, homo sapiens became capable of developing intellects and egos, which allowed us to reflect on our behavior, a potentially positive things, but along with the capacity for reflection came capacities for judgment, shame and guilt (specialties of the Church, btw), and along with judgment, shame and guilt came emotional and psychological disturbances and distortions, which caused our personal and social evolution to become somewhat derailed.

Here's famed psychoanalyst, Karen Horney:

"Inherent in man are evolutionary constructive forces, which urge him to realize his given potentialities, that man by his very nature and of his own accord, strives toward self-realization, and that his values evolve from such striving. With such a belief in an autonomous striving toward self-realization, we do not need an inner straight jacket with which to shackle our spontaneity, nor the whip of inner dictates to drive us to perfection. There is no doubt that such disciplinary methods can succeed in suppressing undesirable factors, but there is also no doubt that they are injurious to our growth. We do not need them because we see a better possibility of dealing with destructive forces in ourselves: that of actually outgrowing them. The way toward this goal is an ever increasing awareness and understanding of ourselves. Self-knowledge, then, is not an aim in itself, but a means of liberating the forces of spontaneous growth. In this sense, to work at ourselves becomes not only the prime moral obligation, but at the same time, in a very real sense, the prime moral privilege."

If you're a reader of the FPL blog, you probably seen that quote before because it's one of my favorites. What Horney is saying here is that if the "whip of inner dictates" - i.e. - judgment, shame and guilt - were not in play in our psyches, we would naturally outgrow our primitive impulses. Again, it is our belief in our own badness that causes us to act badly. In other words, our actual original sin is believing in original sin.

Here's a quote from the home page of Full Permission Living:

"Full Permission Living is the based on the understanding that human beings are, by first nature, sane, loving, cooperative, creative, humorous, intelligent, productive and naturally self-regulating. Full Permission Living rests on the foundation of truth that all people are entitled to live pleasure-filled, spontaneous, lives without guilt, shame or oppressive inner rules and prohibitions. Indeed, we are meant to live with full inner permission to follow our natural inner guidance and our inborn pleasure instinct to seek out gratification in all of our actions and endeavors, and that such a way of living always benefits those around us and those that we love."

That last line is important, folks. Contrary to common (erroneous) beliefs, truly living a life of self-centeredness - i.e. - centered in your true self - will always benefit the people in your life energetically as well. That's the harmony of the way higher consciousness works. The belief in competitiveness and scarcity is exactly that - a belief, an idea, perhaps an experiment or game that we have been playing that we are now beginning in earnest to outgrow.

Hey, we've had some great wars, haven't we? Some spectacular thefts, scandalous cheating, innovative brutality, really taken it to the edge, right? It was stimulating for sure, but if you're ready for the next level of excitement - peace, harmony, bliss, expansive creativity without competition, deep love, Eros and sex, vibrant health and abundance... then keep in mind what Karen Horney's "prime moral privilege" is - to work on yourself - and have a blast!  

Don't Worry, Be Happy!

There's a very interesting short piece on happiness versus pleasure by Steve Ross (famous yoga instructor) and Olivia Rosewood (spiritual writer) called: "How to Find True Happiness."
Most of the article is about what happiness isn't, rather than what it is or how to attain it, but nonetheless the authors make some worthy points.

Here's one:

"Pleasure comes from getting what you want: for example food, good sex, clothes, etc. But pleasure is short-lived and fickle. It lasts for as long as it lasts--a few hours at best. And then it's gone. Pleasure is fleeting. However true happiness is inexhaustible and permanent."

Yes. I frequently tell people that if they attempt to rest their sense of happiness on the attainment of "goals," for example, their time spent happy will only be a matter of moments - when the goals are actually achieved - whereas if they find happiness in the process that leads up to the attainment of the goals, their happy time will be much more substantial.

Here's more from Ross and Rosewood:

"Pleasure and pain are two sides of the same coin. One never goes anywhere without the other, and they alternate. You may eat, but you'll be hungry again. You're lonely, then you're in love, then you're lonely, then you're in love. Then you're lonely and in love at the same time (and hopefully writing country western songs). Love and hate, war and peace, hot and cold, success and failure, rich and poor, and on and on. But true happiness transcends the pleasure/pain principle."

Sigmund Freud, the father of psychoanalysis, who coined that term, "pleasure principle," says it this way:

"The primordial or initial principle of life is the pleasure principle. The aim of the pleasure principle is to rid the person of tension, or if this is impossible, to reduce the amount of tension to a low level. Tension is experienced as pain or discomfort, while relief from tension is experienced as pleasure or satisfaction. The aim of the pleasure principle may be said, then, to consist of avoiding pain and finding pleasure."

Okay, so according to Ross and Rosewood and Dr. Freud, pleasure comes from the momentary gratification of a desire and the momentary elimination of pain. But where does happiness come from?

Back to you, R & R:

"Happiness is in you, it is you, and it's not coming from an external source. Happiness doesn't come from the objects of satisfaction, it comes from you. This is where many people are erroneous in their perception, and also why people stress out, worry, and suffer: They believe happiness is out there...somewhere."

Beautiful! HAPPINESS IS US! I love it! It's us, and it's in us, not "out there." Right! "The Kingdom of Heaven is within you." When I was a kid, sitting in church, I used to listen very carefully, not to what the priests and nuns were saying, because that was mostly controlling, scary, arrogant bullshit, but I'd focus on the actual words that Jesus was saying. He was saying that Heaven was inside of us, not up in the sky somewhere that you have to die to get to. No. "Within you." Woah!

So, then, what's the road to happiness? It is the road to the self. It is finding, within, and then being our true selves on a day-to-day, moment-to-moment basis. In other words, happiness comes from uncovering and connecting to ourselves, not from the pleasure of attaining the satisfaction of our desires or from avoiding pain, both of which are excellent goals, mind you, just not the source of happiness.

Needless to say (But I always say it anyway!), we're back to the need for some kind of self-work if we've lost our way and disconnected from our true selves, and that self-work very often requires the help of some kind of guide (i.e. - in a full spectrum, mind-body-spirit process). But the good news is, when you do reach out for help, you can start feeling happier right away - again, because happiness isn't a goal, a "prize" at the end of a journey; happiness is a state you can be in while you're on your journey.

Alexander Lowen, the brilliant creator of Bioenergetics, explains it eloquently:

"The act of reaching out is itself the basis for the experience of happiness. Happiness is the feeling of being fully alive in the here and now, which means to be fully alive in the bodily sense. Happiness is more than the release of tension and the satisfaction of needs, though that is part of it. In happiness, the will recedes and the ego surrenders its rule over the body. Happiness cannot be possessed. One must give oneself over to the happiness, allow the happiness to take possession of one's being. To have happiness, one has to 'let go', that is, allow the body to respond freely."

Click here for a little meditation you could do on a daily basis: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yjnvSQuv-H4

WE CREATE OUR OWN REALITY... NO EXCEPTIONS!

THE TRUTH ABOUT EVERYTHING, PART SIX: WE ARE NOT ALL THE SAME!

No, I'm not just trying to be provocative or politically incorrect here in sharing this sixth installment of The Truth About Everything: "We are not all the same." I do understand, though, that people may find this truth and this particular blog post offensive at first blush. But hear me out.

Of course, in our society, we are all (at least technically) equal under the law, and equally entitled to our "inalienable rights" to "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness." And more deeply, everyone on Earth is part of the great oneness of All That Is, and all living beings are worthy of unconditional love, as set forth in Truth #2. None are abandoned by Source. Ever.

However... a main cause of many personal and social conflicts, even of wars, is that we do not recognize that we are also different from each other in some very significant ways, and I am not referring to customs or languages, but something essentially much deeper.

For several years in the 1990s, I struggled with a riddle as a therapist. Why would some patients I worked with in therapy progress further and more rapidly than others when their overall character structure, relative backgrounds, childhood experiences and genuine commitment to their process was pretty much the same, and my approach and commitment as their therapist was a constant? What was the "X factor" in my clients' progressions through their self-work? Why did some seem to have different "ceilings" or thresholds as to how far they were able to raise their consciousnesses?

At a certain point in my pondering, I began drawing the conclusion that it must be a soul/energy issue. In other words, it seemed to me that some human beings incarnated with more of their Higher Self consciousness in tow, so to speak. I thought, perhaps in the same way that we devote different amounts of energy to different areas of our lives - work, love, child-rearing, leisure - maybe our Higher Selves invest different amounts of energy into different lifetimes. This idea seemed to work, seemed to make sense, but yet I didn't feel quite settled with it.

Then, not shortly after I considered the above idea, I came across a book called, "Upcoming Changes," by Joya Pope. The book was interesting enough until I got to the chapters on "Soul Ages." As I eagerly read that material, the proverbial lightbulb went off big time. Click. Click. Click. Yes. Yes. Yes. Now, it made sense.

The information Pope channeled basically laid out systematically and eloquently how just as human beings go through a physical developmental process, so too do our spiritual selves go through a process of growth and evolution. In other words, just as we grow from babies to adults physically over the course of one lifetime, our souls also evolve over many lifetimes through stages similar to infancy, childhood, adolescence, adulthood and elder. Her descriptions of the various soul ages were so spot on, and the implications so profound, that they dramatically effected my understanding of people, and of our world, not to mention shifting the way I worked and thought as a therapist.

Here's Joya Pope on Soul Ages:

"On each physical plane, existence changes and deepens the essence's point of view. This involves going through developmental levels - Infant, Baby, Young, Mature, and Old Soul. This is an extraordinarily long 'game' we are talking about, at least from the earthly perspective. Soul age refers to how a person has grown from experience on the planet, not just to how many lifetimes he or she has lived. No person, essence or entity is "ahead" or "behind" any other, but is simply occupying another place in the continuous circle leading to and from the Tao. Ways of being are supposed to be different in different developmental stages; at some point we experience it all, moving continually along to different levels of understanding and responsibility."

Wow! So, just as there are physical babies, there are baby souls. Just as there are physical adults, there are adult souls. Etc. Etc. And just as it would be irrational to expect a physical baby to be able to feed and shelter itself, or to drive a car or have sex, it is equally irrational to expect a baby soul, even in an adult physical body, to attain higher states of consciousness much beyond the accomplishments of reflex and survival. Baby souls, in other words, generally live simple lives, with simplistic beliefs, focused on getting their basic needs met, very often by seeking others to manage the provision of those needs.

Here's Joya Pope on one aspect of baby souls:

"Structure helps Baby Souls to feel comfortable in the world. They want to be directed and therefore seek out higher authorities who are willing to lay out clear rules for them. As a small example of this, they would rarely defend their child to the school principal, but push to make the child act acceptably to the teachers and administration. Sometimes a Baby Soul will seek out - even again and again - discipline from the prison system as a way to civilize himself. This soul age will hold traditional religious leaders in esteem, turn doctors into gods, and likely feel their country, their army, and certain politicians, can do no wrong."

[Not to be political here, but obviously, the so-called "Conservative Movement" in our society could perhaps more accurately be called the "Baby Soul Society." Sorry, I couldn't resist.]

The personal and social ramifications of this understanding, or the lack of it, are tremendous. 

If you are a mature soul and you mistakenly assume that your young soul boyfriend is also a mature soul, you will conclude in frustration that his self-centered egotism is a deliberate assault on your integrity, rather than a measure of his "immaturity" at the soul level. Instead of accepting who he is, and moving on to a relationship with someone who is on your level, you will stay and fight, futilely, to try and get him to be someone he is not yet ready to be.

Likewise, if a predominantly mature soul country, like the United States (believe it or not), assumes that baby soul countries, like Iraq or Afghanistan, are maturational equals (in spite of the fact that they require women to hide their faces, still publicly stone people to death for adultery and commit suicide in hopes that there will be virgins in Heaven for them to have sex with), then we will uselessly bomb them into oblivion instead of helping them feel more secure and less threatened in the world, while simultaneously setting appropriate boundaries and restrictions (disarming them) on what they are allowed to do within the human community. (And remember, it is in the mistaken belief that they could be equal partners that we sold them many of their weapons in the first place.)

Now, like all of these Truths About Everything, one's first reaction to this one might be that the information presented here is not only radical, but potentially inflammatory. But would be a misunderstanding. As Shakespeare said: "All the world's a stage and all the men and women merely players." In other words, if life here in our world is a play, which essentially it is, then each of us, whatever role we play, is an actor whose role at any given time in the play may be of child or adult, villain or hero, leader or follower, but as actors, as souls, again, we are all equally worthy of all that life has to offer.

We don't believe, of course, that a child deserves to be less safe, healthy or happy than an adult does, but we do know that a child is not ready to provide for the common good, yet, nor offer guidance, leadership or wisdom for others, yet, either. They are still learning how to survive and thrive in physical reality and must be taught this by their elders. Children, and young souls, are narcissistic by nature, in other words. Mature and old souls are more altruistic and giving by nature. This is why old souls live lifetimes primarily as teachers in one way or another.

After you read the soul age material, look around you, at everyone, and consider what soul age you are dealing with in each relationship. You will find your perspective and your levels of frustration shifting when you do. And remember, don't give the car keys to a 3-year old!