Tuesday, September 27, 2016

Keeping Your Consciousness Uplifted

When you have been on a spiritual path for a long time, it is natural to forget what you learned in the beginning. When we do our practices over and over again, over a long period of time, we can easily go unconscious and our progress on the spiritual path begins to stall.

What is it that we are trying to do when we pray, meditate, or breathe? We are trying to connect with the divine spirit and to return to our Center. To do that, we have to raise our frequency. Our heart leads us to God and to the Goddess, but we have to do the work ourselves. The resonance is with us all of the time, but when your frequency becomes dull, sluggish, or dark, there is no way to make that divine connection. Even if you are praying or meditating, your vibrational frequency has to be elevated to such a level that you start to find the frequency of God or of the Goddess. So as you practice, remember why you are doing what you are doing: You are striving to uplift your consciousness and to raise your frequency in order to make the divine connection.

When we elevate our frequency, we are building our body of light. Lightness is high frequency, darkness is low frequency. Light is light, dark is heavy. When your thoughts are agitated or when they are limited, or anything in between, it is a low frequency. Everything you do from breathing, to thinking, to speaking, or to taking action, has an impact on your being and the way that you are in this world. The food that you eat, the way you cook, the frequency of the foods you choose, the style you cook with, the environment you live in, the people you choose to spend time with---all of these affect you. If you are thinking heavy thoughts, stop thinking heavy thoughts. Remember to elevate your frequency, even in the midst of a challenge.

In order to succeed on a spiritual path, you have to learn how to develop your intuition and how to accelerate your frequency. Just a few minutes of meditation or a few minutes of reciting The Lord’s Prayer, can help so much. But you must remember what you are doing and how you are doing it. If you are sitting in meditation in the morning, but you are worrying about something by mid-morning or upset about something on the news, your frequency will begin to decline. So always keep yourself aligned with beauty and with love and with light.

When you go to your altar and you light your candle, remember the real reason you are bringing yourself there is to light the candle of your heart. In the morning, when the sun is rising and you breathe the golden light into your third eye, your throat, and your chest, and you fill yourself with golden light, you are doing it to elevate your consciousness and to build your light body. And at the end of the day, when the sun is setting, take in that last little bit of light, so that you can carry it with you into the darkness.

Remember that as a being, you are a frequency, and everything you do affects the nature of your frequency. Make yourself light and remember you are doing it not only for yourself, but also for everyone else. Every being is a frequency. Open your heart in your prayers and surround the world, and send out that frequency everywhere. Offer it very simply, and it will go where it needs to go and it will do what it needs to do.

These words from Bapuji recently got my attention: “Love flowing in another’s life is the source of our happiness, and love flowing in our life is the source of another’s happiness, and this is a universal law.” How we become happy is expressed here in a different way from what I’m used to. You are the source of my happiness, and I am the source of your happiness?

Yes, because we are all one. If somebody is a fun, light-hearted being, we gravitate to that person because their spirit uplifts us. We listen to music because its frequency uplifts us. A being in whom love is flowing lifts us up into the frequency of love.

But I thought that I was the source of my own happiness.

You have to understand that many paradoxes exist within the universal truths. No one can open the flower within your own heart. You have to do that yourself. Yes, we are the source of each other’s happiness when love is flowing in our lives, but each individual soul has a unique journey of his or her own that has to unlock the flower within the heart and keep it open in order to realize love. We can support each other and love each other, but we cannot do it for each other.

As we walk everyday on the path of love, and as we journey as a soul on the path of love, we have to face our darkness. So there is that paradox. Lead us from untruth to truth, from darkness to light. We have an aspect of ourselves that is unconscious. So even though we are drawn to the light, we have to be brave enough to meet ourselves when there is darkness.     

Blessings and love,

Maresha

Tuesday, September 6, 2016

One Primary Challenge

Each incarnation has, at its core, one primary challenge. In the course of a lifetime, all of one’s experiences are geared to learning the nature of this challenge. This learning occurs on various levels; it is not simply black and white, or 1, 2, 3. It permeates our consciousness, and therefore, our day-to-day existence. This primary pattern underlies all small situations, all large situations, and everything in between. When the soul becomes aware of its opportunity in this lifetime, one can begin to unravel, sometimes thread by thread, the nature of this primary challenge. We can also say that the challenge is the lesson currently trying to be mastered within the soul.

The primary lesson that is learned through the various life experiences is not necessarily difficult or arduous, although it may be. For some souls the lesson might be to learn how to relax and be in joy.  Therefore, the lessons should not always be thought of as hard or challenging, even though someone who is learning how to relax may find this a challenging feat. Dropping all ideas, projections and expectations around what the challenge looks like is a good idea. Then you can begin to observe neutrally, within yourself, the reoccurring themes in your life.

The reoccurring themes are undeniable; they show themselves to us over and over again. When a soul is young and beginning the quest, the challenge is not as obvious. But as one moves into adulthood, the challenge becomes more obvious, and even more obvious in middle age, until it becomes undeniable. The sheer act of living and being alive will bring us everything we need to learn. If we are open to this learning, we can progress more smoothly. Through our willingness, we can learn to accept the primary lesson that comes to us. If we do not like the lesson, our levels of resistance will stall our progression and bring us greater levels of pain.

While the soul has one primary lesson to learn in this lifetime, we can also say the soul has one primary purpose. As we fulfill that purpose, we can then accept the next level of learning for which we are ready. In these accelerated times of change, the soul has the opportunity to explore and learn whatever it needs to regarding the primary lesson, as well as some sub-primary lessons which may reveal themselves. You can accomplish a great deal as you weave this   awareness into your practice of awakening.

The primary lesson reveals itself to us as a negative or a challenge.  See if you can recognize yourself in the following descriptions. You may recognize yourself in more than one, but there will be One Primary Challenge that you revert to the most when you are in reaction to life. You will recognize that you often react in the same way, over and over again.

 The following are primary challenges or lessons :

1. Self-deprecation –inferiority complex and low self-esteem. “I am unworthy.” “When I am right, no one remembers, when I am wrong, no one forgets.”

2. Arrogance – an air of superiority that covers a feeling of low self esteem and the fear that others will pass judgment and find them wanting. “I am so good at what I do that I make others look foolish.”  “I am afraid others will see my weaknesses and not like me.”

3. Self-destruction – the act or motivation to harm oneself either physically or emotionally out of a conscious or unconscious belief that life is not worth living. “I cannot help myself from drinking too much.”  “I want to be done with all of this.”

4. Greed – the experience of perpetual wanting or desiring, out of a fear that there will not be enough to go around. “There is never enough for me.”  “I want more, more money, more things, more love, etc.”   

5. Martyrdom – needless suffering, feeling like a victim in a situation that is beyond one’s control and feeling like there is little that can be done about it. “Look how you treat me after all I have done for you.” “I always get the bad end of the deal.”

6. Impatience – a feeling of frustration or tension that comes from the fear of missing out, and a feeling that there is not enough time. “I don’t have the time to wait for . . . .” “I wish everyone would hurry up, they are holding me back.”

7. Stubbornness – taking a stand in the face of a real or imagined opposition. Fear of change, not wanting to let go of one’s position. “It is my way or the high way.”  “I am sticking to the way I have always done it.”

Once you have begun to observe yourself neutrally with awareness and self-respect and have identified either one or two primary challenges, you can begin to invoke the positive pole of each primary challenge. In order to neutralize the negative, we must learn what the positive pole of the primary lesson is. By applying the positive pole to your primary challenge, it is transformed. In the beginning, this is just a mental process. Later, as you become more internally adept and know how to “burn” the dross of reaction, real transformation happens.
  
Positive Poles of Primary Challenges:

1.       Self-deprecation—humility, humbleness or modesty regarding one’s successes.
2.      Arrogance—a good feeling and pride about the value of one’s work, etc.
3.      Self-destruction—sacrifice and surrender, giving up something of value for the sake of the greater good.
4.      Greed--appetite, a desire for all that life has to offer.
5.      Martyrdom—sacrifice, giving up to others instead of thinking of only oneself.
6.      Impatience—spontaneity, boldness. Relieving the frustrated energy with forward movement.
7.      Stubbornness—strong intention, fixed in purpose, determination.

     If your challenge is stubbornness, for example, practice letting go in the face of resistance and take a risk when you feel rigid, unyielding, and resistant because of an underlying fear of change. Invoking the opposite pole is an ongoing practice in consciousness. In our next message I will address the specific steps to successfully letting go and moving into a new level of consciousness.