What Is Love? Understand the 3 Spiritual Levels of Love

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By Sally Kempton  |      

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What is Love? As much as we might like to, we can’t force love to happen. But we can understand its many levels and connect more easily to its source.

“I know love is there,” my old friend Elliot said. “My question is, Why is it that so many times, I can’t feel it?”
We were in the middle of a workshop I teach called “Exploring the Heart.” Elliot had recently lost his father, and so I asked him, “Are you talking about something specific?”
“Of course,” he said. As he told me the story of his father’s death, I felt a deep sense of recognition. The questions his experience raised are essential ones, questions we all deal with as we probe that most fundamental and yet elusive of all human feelings: love.
Elliot and his father had been polite strangers for nearly 20 years. Yet when the father became seriously ill, the only person he wanted around him was his son. “I knew we’d been given our big chance to open up to each other,” Elliot said. “I kept thinking, ‘Now he’ll finally get who I really am! We’ll bond, and I’ll be able to feel love for him at last!’”
See also Love-What-Is Meditation
The problem was that Elliot couldn’t dig out a single nugget of love for his father. He wanted to love him. He knew he should love him. But their history together had formed such a habit of disconnection that he felt nothing at all.

How Love Feels

So Elliot did the only thing he could think of to close the gap. He asked himself, “How would I act if I did feel love for my father?” Then he acted on the intuition that arose for him.
Elliot realized that when we really love someone, we’re attentive to even the smallest minutiae of that person’s existence. So he practiced paying close attention to his father. He slowed himself down and tried to keep his awareness linked to his father’s breath. He served his father. He fielded the emotional crises of the other family members. He did everything, in short, that a devoted son would do—and he did it, as best he could, as an austerity, a practice.
See also Feel Your Best This Season
Elliot’s father died three months later, and Elliot sat through the funeral dry-eyed, still waiting for his heart to open. During the last hymn, he finally gave up hope. He slumped down in his seat, deeply tired, with no more effort left in him.
At that moment, like a small trickle from a dammed-up stream, he felt a stir of tenderness in his heart. It came softly, yet it was almost shockingly sweet. It was the love he’d been trying to feel. “It felt as if I’d tapped into some kind of big, impersonal loving energy,” he told me. “It didn’t exclude my father, but it definitely wasn’t about him. Instead, the feeling I had in that moment was that there was nothing but love. Everything was love. ‘Oh, my God,’ I thought, ‘I’m having a spiritual experience, right here at my father’s funeral!’” The thought struck him as so funny that he giggled—causing something of a commotion in the funeral chapel, as people turned to see what was making him laugh at such an inappropriate moment.
“I wondered where that love came from,” he told me. “Was it a reward for taking care of my father? If so, why wasn’t it there when I needed it, so to speak?”
I realized that behind Elliot’s question was an even deeper set of questions, ones that plague us all. They go something like this: If love is real, why doesn’t it feel the way I’ve always heard it was supposed to feel? Why can’t I feel it all the time? And why does love so often feel lacking, or painful, or both?

Love Is a Many-Leveled Thing

Most of us have been confused about love all of our lives. In fact, we often begin the inner life as a search—conscious or unconscious—for a source of love that can’t be taken away. We may have grown up feeling unloved or believing we had to perform heroic feats to deserve love. Our parents, the movies we see, our cultural and religious milieu give us ideas about love that go on influencing us long after we have forgotten their source. When we read spiritual books and encounter teachers, our understanding about love can get even more complicated, because depending on what we read or whom we study with, we get slightly different takes on what love means in spiritual life.
Some teachers tell us that our essence is love; others say love is a passion, an emotion that leads to addiction and clinging. If we’re on a devotional path like bhakti yoga, Sufism, or mystical Christianity, we’re often taught that the way to enlightenment is to fall in love with God and let that love grow until it engulfs us and we become one with the Beloved. If we’re on a more knowledge-based yogic path, we may be taught to look askance at the feelings of bliss and love that arise in practice, because, we’re told, the spaciousness that is our goal is beyond such feelings.
We are soon left to wonder where the truth lies in all of this. When spiritual teachers use the word love, what kind of love are they talking about? Is eros (romantic or sexual love) really different from agape, the so-called unconditional or spiritual love? Is devotional love the same as compassion, or love for humanity? Is love something we have to feel, or is it enough to offer kindness and direct positive thoughts toward ourselves and others? And how is it that some teachers tell us that love is both the path and the goal, while others seem to ignore the subject altogether?
See also Powering Your Spirituality
In spiritual life alone, the word love is used in at least three ways, and our experience and understanding of love will differ according to which aspect of it we are thinking about. For the sake of discussion, let’s refer to these three aspects of love as (1) Absolute Love, or the Great Love, which Ramakrishna, Rumi, and the teachers of the bhakti yoga and nondualist Tantra traditions tell us is ever- present, impersonal, and the very underpinning of the universe; (2) our individual experience of love, which is quirky, personal, and usually directed at something or someone; and (3) love as sadhana (practice).

1. Absolute Love

Love with a capital L: That’s the Great Love, love as the source of everything, love as radical unity. At this level, love is another name for Absolute Reality, Supreme Consciousness, Brahman, God, the Tao, the Source—that vast presence the Shaivite tradition sometimes calls the Heart. The yoga tradition often describes Absolute Reality as satchidananda—meaning that it is pure beingness, present everywhere and in everything (sat), that it is innately conscious (chit), and that it is the essence of joy and love (ananda).
See also The Simple 5-Part Practice To Encourage Self Acceptance
As ananda, the Great Love is woven into the fabric of the universe, which of course also puts it at the center of our own being. Most of us get glimpses of the Great Love at some time in our lives—perhaps in nature, or with an intimate partner, or in the moment of bonding with our children. We remember these experiences for years afterward, often for the rest of our lives. We remember their numinosity, the feeling of deep connectedness they give us, and the fact that even when the love we feel seems inspired by someone or something in particular, it has a profoundly impersonal, universal quality. And sometimes, the Great Love hits us unveiled, as it were, and changes our lives.
It happened like that for me one November evening in 1970. I was sitting with a friend in my living room, listening to a Grateful Dead album, when without warning, an overwhelming experience of joy welled up in me. The state sprang up seemingly out of nowhere, a sensation of tenderness and ecstasy that seemed to ooze out of the walls and the air, carrying with it a sense that everything was a part of me.
This experience inspired a burning desire to get back to it and ultimately became the motive for my spiritual practice. At the time, however, I did what most of us do when we get a glimpse of unconditional tenderness: I projected my inner experience onto the person I happened to be with and decided (rather disastrously, as it turned out) that he was the love of my life and the mate of my soul.

2. Individual Love

All of us, throughout our lives, constantly do what I did—project onto other people and things the feelings of love that actually come from within. “It was the music,” we say. “It was Ned (or Sarah, or Jeannie). It was the surf! It was my teacher’s presence!” Yet the yogic view is that all of our experiences of human love are actually glimpses of the Great Love. (“God’s joy moves from unmarked box to unmarked box,” Rumi wrote. “It hides within these, till one day it cracks them open.”) It is only when love gets filtered through the prism of the human psyche that it begins to look specific and limited. It becomes veiled by our thoughts and feelings, and we start to think that love comes and goes, that we can feel it only for certain people, or that there’s not enough love to go around. We can’t help doing this.
See also Teaching Yoga Self-Love
Our senses, mind, and ego, hardwired to give us the experience of separateness and distinction, set us up to think that love is outside us, that some people and places and things are lovable and others are not, and furthermore that love has different flavors: mother love, romantic love, love of movies, love of nature, compassionate love, sexual love, love of the cozy feeling of being under the covers at the end of a long day.
In short, if the Great Love is naturally unifying, our individual, human experience of love is subject to change and loss, moods and tides, attachments and aversions. It doesn’t matter who or what we love; at some point, the object of our love will disappear from our life or disappoint us or stop being lovable, simply because change is the nature of existence. So individual love is always touched with suffering, even when the love we feel is “spiritual.”
I once heard someone ask a great spiritual teacher, “Will loving you cause me to suffer the way I’ve suffered from loving other people?” The teacher replied, “If you love me in the way you’ve loved other people, you’ll suffer.” He was saying that as long as we think that love comes from something outside ourselves—even from God or a spiritual master—we are going to experience pain. Think of the agonies of the Sufi poets! Think also of the pain we suffer when, like my friend Elliot, we don’t feel loving enough, or when we can’t force love to come in the form we want it to, or when we feel lonely or unappreciated or self-deprecating, or when, despite the fact that we know attachment leads to suffering, we can’t help thinking that the love we were feeling came from Joe or Alice, and that love is gone because Joe or Alice is gone!
See also Create A Life You Love
To say that our individual experience of love can be unsatisfying or changeable or incomplete is not to say it is less real than the Great Love. It is the Great Love, which has simply been subject to filtration. The practice of yoga is about removing the filter, closing the gap between our limited experience and the experience of greatness we all hold inside. That’s the whole point of contemplative practice—especially the practice of loving.

3. Love as Sadhana

The third kind of love—love as a practice—is the medicine for the terrible discrepancy we sometimes feel between our sense of what love can be and the actuality of our ordinary experience of it. The practice of love—actions and attitudes that create an atmosphere of kindness, acceptance, and unity in ourselves and in those around us—is not only the basis of spiritual life, it is also the basis of civilization. We can’t always feel gratitude, but we can remember to say thank you. We can’t always like other people, but we can try to pay attention when they talk to us and help them out when they’re in trouble. We may not feel good about ourselves all the time, but we can practice treating ourselves gently, slowing down and breathing when we want to rush, or talking back to our inner voices of self-criticism and judgment. When it comes to daily life, feeling love may actually be less important than acting loving.
This isn’t meant as an argument for pasted-on smiles, or for the common game of hiding anger and judgment behind a mask of false sweetness. The practice of loving is never about presenting a false front. Instead, it’s an active answer to one of life’s greatest questions: How can I, in spite of what I may be feeling at a particular moment, offer my best to myself and other people?
If you pose this query to yourself—or, better yet, ask yourself (as Elliot did), How would I act if I were feeling love?—you will eventually discover the practice that helps melt your frozen heart, so the love that always hides behind our emotional barricades can show its face. One of my students, caught in an argument with her stepson, asked herself, “How would I be if I really felt love right now?” The answer that came up was “relaxed.” So she practiced relaxing with the breath and was able to talk with her son without the clutch of fear and judgment that had been polarizing the two of them.

How to Connect to the Source of Love

Over the years, two practices have helped me reconnect to the source of love. Both cultivate the feeling of unity. And both are based on the insight that the best way to bypass the ego, which cuts us off from love, is to learn how to undermine our feeling of separation.
The first is the practice of recognizing that the awareness in another person is the same awareness that is in me. Years ago, I had to work with a demanding, critical, narrow-minded boss. One day, when she was being particularly prickly, and I was especially aware of my discomfort in her presence, I gazed into her eyes, focused on the light reflected in her pupils, and reminded myself that the awareness, the life force, the presence that was looking out through her eyes was exactly the same as the awareness that was looking out through mine. Whatever differences there were in our personalities, our mental and emotional states, she and I were the same on the level of pure awareness. Not different but one.
See also The Yoga Of Relationships
It amazed me to see how quickly the feeling of alienation and irritation disappeared. The practice of recognition became the strategy that allowed me to work comfortably with this woman, and I fall back on it now whenever I feel the absence of love. More than any practice I’ve ever done, it helps clean away the germs of alienation, irritability, and jealousy that block my mind and form barriers to the Great Love.
The second practice I use goes right to the heart of our sense of lack, to the secret feeling of not having enough love to give. The great lie that the feeling of separation fosters in us is the delusion of being unloved, or cut off from love, of there not being enough to go around. Not feeling loved ourselves, we pass on our sense of lack to others, so that even when we try to give love, what comes through instead is anxiety or clinging. Yet, as Rumi says in another of his great poems, love is always there, always available, always ready to pour itself out to us. “For 60 years,” Rumi writes, “I have been forgetful, / every moment, but not for a second / has this flowing towards me slowed or stopped.”
Close your eyes for a moment and imagine you are sitting in the center of a vast flow of love. Imagine that love is flowing toward you like water or passing into you like a gentle wind. Whether you actually feel this love or not, keep imagining that it is flowing toward you and into you.
Another way to receive love is to imagine that just outside the window of your room sits a compassionate and loving being, someone wise and incredibly forgiving. This person is watching you through the window; her glance protects you and surrounds you with sweetness.
See also 5 Things Yoga Taught Me About Love
Allow yourself to receive the love that is flowing toward you from this being. If thoughts come up to block it—like “I don’t deserve this” or “This is just an exercise; it’s not real”—notice them and let them go as you might in meditation, saying, “Thinking,” and then breathing the thought out. Your only task is to receive.
When you open your eyes, look around you with the thought that the love you have been contemplating is still flowing toward you from whatever you see and from the air itself.
In truth, it is. The Great Love, the love that is the kernel of everything, is present in everything, peeking out during every moment in which we feel a spark of tenderness, appreciation, or affection. Any glimmer of love is a spark from that fire and leads us back to it.

Sally Kempton, also known as Durgananda, is an author, a meditation teacher, and the founder of the Dharana Institute.

source-http://www.yogajournal.com/article/lifestyle/what-is-love/

The Mandala and the Tao: Imagining the Unimaginable

         

 

 

Peter Patrick Barreda, Guest
Waking Times
Eyes look but cannot see it.
Ears listen but cannot hear it.
Hands grasp but cannot touch it.
Beyond the senses lies the great Unity—
invisible, inaudible, intangible.
—Tao Te Ching
To understand the soul of the mandala is to gaze into the heart of truth and see the essence of reality. That truth is an intricate landscape of ebb and flow, light and dark, yin and yang—it is the Tao. The Tao as described by the Chinese since ancient days is the ungraspable essence of reality that flows on, inexorably, regardless of our own worries and concerns. The Tao Te Ching begins:

“The path that can be walked is not the eternal path.”

We may approximate an understanding of the totality of existence, but full and complete knowledge of it is unattainable. This limitation on our understanding stems from the fact that we are an inclusive element in the universe, and as such an integral part of everything we are tied in to the infinite sequence of cause and effect, action and reaction. Therefore we can observe the universe around us, we may even assemble an adequate description of the way that elements of the universe seem to behave. However, to achieve a complete understanding of how we fit into the picture we would need to move beyond our very existence in order to exclude ourselves from the equations we seek to form. This necessary separation is not simply a physical one, such as to sit on another planet and observe humanity through a telescope. It is a separation of levels of consciousness, of self-awareness. The phenomenon of consciousness is a result of natural universal phenomena, and so to use our consciousness to fully understand itself is impossible. It would be like searching for a red ball in a red room while wearing red-tinted glasses. We see everything through the lens of consciousness, and that lens can never be effectively turned back upon itself. Of course we can study our consciousness, and learn of its characteristics, its behavior, its potential, but we can never fully understand it, just as the telescope, no matter how powerful, can never find itself in its own limited field of vision.

The mandala is a visual lesson in the ungraspable totality of reality; its inherent variability is the unattainable truth of the Tao. Every mandala is an intimate portrait of the universe, and every mandala, with its infinite potential for variability, is different from every other. From this infinite variability we may shift our perception a bit and say that every mandala, in each of its widely-varied forms, is identical to every other. It is only our perception that changes, ebbing and flowing with the movement of the Tao. The universe is at once static and dynamic, placid and chaotic. It is an unchanging organism that never stops transforming itself. By conceiving of every mandala as identical to every other, despite the protestations of our conscious awareness to the contrary, we can come close to grasping the ungraspable, to imagining the unimaginable.
As with the universe, our experience with the mandala should be more of enjoyment than dissection, more appreciation than analysis. It is certainly beneficial to understand the physical workings of the world, but we must not lose sight of the majestic beauty that surrounds us. We should bask in the splendid glow of energy, in the dance of light and the radiance of the stars. We must look at the curves and the colors of the mandala, we must revel in its vibrant, flowing curves. We must listen to the birdsong, feel the smoothness of the stones, drink in the brilliance of the moon. We must stroll through the palace of life with our hearts and minds open to the harmony of its architecture. This is the essence of life, to take the truth of beauty into our spirit and to recognize the universe for what it is—breathtaking, wondrous and whole.
A core message of Taoism is to practice wu-wei, which can best be described as a policy of non-forcing. It is a call to recognize the flow of the Tao, the watercourse of existence, and to refrain from resisting its movement. The futility of battling the inertia of the universe should be obvious, yet that is precisely what we spend our entire lives doing. It is a struggle against an unconquerable force, a war that cannot be won. If we would only recognize the beauty in the never-ending evolution of the universe, we could appreciate the value of following its lead. Instead we create a picture of the world we want, and struggle to force the real world into this artificial mold. Somehow, in the course of our psychological development, we acquire certain values and opinions, and we take these as absolute requirements for a “proper” world. Of course, nothing could be further from the truth. Everything that we believe is relative and subjective, and what to one person is a critical sacrifice to the god of the harvest, to another is cold-blooded murder. The source of most of our stress and anxiety is the considerable difference between the way the world actually is and the way we think it should be.
We are forever looking at the world around us and judging whether or not it lives up to our personal criteria. This is a source of perpetual tension within us, and continual conflict around the globe. Instead we should see that all the people of the world are but facets of the universal mandala, and as such, different aspects of ourselves. Just as every mandala is identical to every other in its multifaceted potential, so are each of us as cells in the vast organism of Humanity, of the Universe. In our behavior we are all equally right and wrong, equally good and bad, equally holy, equally damned. And, like the mandala, we are all equally glorious, equally beautiful. This vast array of potentiality is the essence of reality. Its unimaginable variety, so far from the reach of the human mind, can be found within the elegant form of the mandala. We must seek the source of this variety, and strive to grasp its significance—in this way we can learn compassion and acceptance from the universe. Rather than force our individual agendas onto people that are different from us, we must appreciate those differences and learn from each other. This is the way of the universe, the way of the Tao. It is the lesson we learn, if only a little piece at a time, when we gaze into the heart of the mandala.
**Material copyright 2009, Peter Patrick Barreda, Reprinted with permission.**

About the Author

Peter Patrick Barreda is a mandala artist, occasional writer, chronic over-thinker, and webmaster of mandalaZone.com. He is fascinated by origins and causes, and the deeply-hidden reasons behind everything. He believes that mandalas are the underlying pattern for everything in the universe—physical, mental and spiritual, though at their core these three are essentially one. Please visit his fascinating website, where this article was originally featured.

source-http://www.wakingtimes.com/2015/05/23/the-mandala-and-the-tao-imagining-the-unimaginable/

How To Live More Fearlessly By Connecting With Your Highest Self

by Jenie Lee

One of the most universal human fears is the fear of dying. It is instinctual to act in ways that preserve life and rightly so, for we are not meant to seek death.
However fear of dying, which is as much a part of life as being born, limits our ability to live life to the fullest. And according to yoga philosophy, it is an avoidance of truth. In the classic yogic text the Bhagavad Gita, Paramahansa Yogananda translates, “For that which is born must die, and that which is dead must be born again. Why then shouldst thou grieve about the unavoidable?”
To live a full and happy life, we cannot allow our energy to be drained by fear — especially the fear of what is unavoidable. To do so is considered one of the five obstructions or kleshas, to a clear consciousness and therefore a full life.
The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali identify the kleshas that keep us from the complete, free experience we are meant to live as: ignorance of our true spiritual nature (avidya), egoism (asmita), attachment (raga), aversion (dvesa), and the fear of death (abhinivesa).
By looking at how all of these fit together, we can start to dismantle the power of abhinivesa and reclaim the totality of our life force energy. Let’s begin by defining what we consider to be our “self. “ Most of us define ourselves by our personality, our bodies, our relational roles, career, or creative expressions — all of which are temporary, changeable, bound by likes and dislikes, and destined to physical death.
Every day we experience some degree of fear that these temporary aspects of the "ego self" will die. Consider the innumerable ways in which we are afraid to let go of anything relating to our public image, our physical bodies, our relationships, or our material possessions.
If it our belief that we may fade away when these expressions of the ego self do, then no wonder we are afraid of dying!
Take stock of the ways in which you cling to life as you know it right now. Do you consistently avoid change? Are you battling the natural aging process of the body by obsessing about a youthful appearance? Maybe you are afraid to take reasonable risks or are unwilling to embrace the unknown. We spend much time in "small self" preservation.
However, when we begin to inquire into the immortal nature of the "soul self," we discover something changeless and eternal.
The simplest way to connect to this Higher Self is through meditation. When the mind is quiet and our sensory connection to the external world is turned off temporarily, we find within a vast Self of love and beauty that is rich in its essence, although intangible in form. Through stillness and other devotional practices such as prayer, chanting or rituals that access the Divine within, we can break free from our fear of death and the bondage of the other kleshas.
When we focus on preserving the connection to our true Self, we transcend our limited beliefs and access something a higher, universal intelligence. From there we can observe in a detached manner, the tendencies of the egoic self. We can return to the ego's attachments (raga) and aversions (dvesa), but can choose to identify with what is infinite and everlasting instead.
As we recognize our true nature as an intrinsic part of the cosmic whole, we live life with deeper connection and we engage consciously with our evolutionary process. We embrace life and death as experiences in self-awareness, rather than self-preservation. We align ourselves with universal principles of love and unity and expand into a newfound state of freedom.
As we begin to embrace this shift in how we identify ourselves, we experience change in our lives with more ease and find that "we" actually always remain the same. The essence of who we are still exists, regardless of the external circumstance that fluctuates around us in constant ebb and flow.
By loosening our grip on all the ways we cling to life, eventually we overcome the fear of dying. And then even when the body passes away, we remain peaceful and complete. We are part of the whole.
Photo Credit: Stocksy

source-http://www.mindbodygreen.com/0-18790/how-to-live-more-fearlessly-by-connecting-with-your-highest-self.html

Twin Flame Reunion: The Sacred Fire 2015 to 2025

Posted  by Judith Kusel 

I greet you on this the 24 December 2014, with all my heart, soul and Being and may your heart and soul be open to receive this message with great love.
For we are standing on the threshold of an immense change in the way life is going to lived as the New Age truly is not only dawning, but has been birthed.  It is not something in the far distant anymore – it is here and now and with us every single breathing moment of the day and night.  We are already LIVING it, whether we are conscious of this of not.
I have been called upon in the last few years to do Twin Flame Soul Readings, and I do believe that this has something to do with my own soul and what I have retrieve from the Ancient Memory banks, and from the what has been lost to mankind, with my Twin Flame in a lot of ways, the import of which will only truly reveal itself in the next years.
For I have been shown again last night, of how important the next ten years will be, in our whole human development, and nowhere will this be more felt than in the relationship areas.  For the old way of relating will dissolve, as these old patterns, the way we behaved and lived since the fall of Atlantis, is leaving us now.
It is no accident that so many of us, have created patterns with our Twin Flames and those whom we had relationships with,  that come back to haunt us in this lifetime.
Not all relationships were ever forged in love – some were forged in times where dowry agreements were considered more important than anything else, and women became bargaining tools for political and other alliances.  It goes without saying that a lot of women were literally sold into slavery, into harems, as mere chattels, vessels to be used and discarded at will.
So, all of these relationships,  then coming to haunt us, as has happened and will happen more and more in the next few years, as we have to heal deep inside of ourselves:  – it is not only the women who have to find the deep love and forgiveness inside of themselves for the men who took away their dignity, their right to be the Goddess of their own bodies and their own lives, but also the men – for in that the old control mechanisms fall away, some kind of balance has to be reached, where we can relate at deep and profound soul level again and understand, that when we love at soul level, then the physical love has to manifest into form in the same way.  For the soul is Divine in itself, and is innocent and pure.  It can be no other in the sight of the Divine, who created the soul in perfection.
Mostly it is the deep shame and guilt that we all felt at some stage, when we incarnated onto planet earth.  Most often we tended to be ashamed at what happened to us, whether we were responsible for what happened, or not.  We tended to beat ourselves up for the rest of our lives, because we felt that should have had a better deal in life.  Shame and guilt can be carried over, over many lifetimes, as the old negative patterns, the negative cords, attachments, and hooks that are there in our sexual area, and still keep us tied to those who entered there, even from lifetimes ago.
I believe that higher healing is now going to become the norm, as balance and sanity returns to mankind.  For one moment, in Atlantis, insanity reigned – now sanity is returning and with it these deep soul wounds and scars will have to be cleaved open to the very core in order for us all to heal: – men and women.
We are all one and the same, whether we were the ones who abused their power, or who were abused …..
The true and deep lesson for the whole of humanity lies in the correct use of power – for all power at its core is neutral, it has no negative nor positive charges.  It is what we do with the energy of power  that has brought the destruction of mankind time and again.
We now will be forced to delve ever deeper into our relationships, not only with our Twin Flames, or other souls, but with ourselves and the Divine, we will be cleaved open to the very core.  It means shedding skin after skin after skin – until there is just the naked soul in all its glory and innocence and in its true Son- and Daughtership of God and in the role of co-creator.
What is it that we wish to create with our relationships?
What is that we wish to create with our love for each other?
How is our love relationship going to serve the rest of humanity and the cosmos at large?
How are we both going to serve our highest soul purpose and calling, and still find that deep love for each other, and serve by loving each other in new and sacred ways?
How are we going to use the sexual fire for the greater good of all and in higher service?
In the Ancient Mystery Schools the soul had to go through stringent initiations into the rites of Love and the Sexual Energy.  It was no joke.  Both were considered the most powerful gifts that the Creator God bestowed upon his/her creation!!!!  Read this again:  the most powerful gifts bestowed!
It is what we do with these most powerful gifts that make or break us!
The Ancients knew this!
That is why one had to go through initiations, so that the inner strength, the inner fortitude, that inner soul self, could be trained to find that deep love inside themselves, in such a way, that that love would sustain them through life, no matter what life brought in both challenges and support.  For once the soul was deeply anchored in the LOVE DIVINE, it would be able to deeply love itself, and when it deeply loved itself, it could then love the other, in the same measure as the love for self was there and the love for the Divine.  The sacred Trinity!
For in any relationship there are not just two souls involved – there is the third force, and that third force is the governing force, the POWER itself.
For in true and deep union, there is a deep and profound honoring of the other.  There is a deep and profound understanding that the Divine lives within that soul as it lives in the body, the mind, and spirit.  With it a deep respect for the power of the sexual energy, for when it is used in the correct way, then egos have to get out of the way, and a sacred flame/fire is ignited, which will singe and burn and harm if not understood fully.
It was no accident that those men who truly had powerful life’s missions to fulfill always had a twin flame with whom to perform these ancient Sexual rites, because of the fire of the sacred flame – for the woman is the transmitter of this energy more than the man, and he can only step into his fullness of his own power and higher maturity of his mission, with her being empowered totally within.  Read that again:  SHE HAS TO BE TOTALLY EMPOWERED FROM DEEP WITHIN AND AT SOUL LEVEL.
With this is also no accident that true maturity, the true wisdom, and the true initiations were only considered to be fully activated at the age of 60!
Yes, 60, for then one was considered to have finally come of age, to understand the deeper Mystery and to use its power with responsibility.  So all the other years were spent in initiations, so that one could then step into full power at the age of 60!  If was also accident that when these sexual rites were performed within that maturity that the next fire was ignited – the fire of longevity!    One literally could expand the life span, by finally understanding the deeper mystery of Twin Flame union – and all the energies involved.
If there is not balance within the male, and balance within the female, then there is imbalance, and imbalance creates immense pain and suffering in any form!
It means that he stands in his full power – but this is not brute force, but it is tempered by love, deep and abiding love and a deep understanding of the Mystery of Love and Life to which even he most bow and bend to, and be flexible within.
It means that she stand in her full power – which is there in her womb, her sacred soul self, her emotional center.  She has to fully empowered by the mystery of the Spirit and Soul, and all that is Love at its deepest mystery.  She can only transmit the sacred fire via her womb, if she is firmly anchored into the Mystery of the Goddess herself, for she BECOMES the Goddess in the sexual act!  If she is not thus empowered, she will go off kilter and then will withdraw from the male because she is not within the supreme balance of life itself!
See, then how much of this mankind has lost.
See, then how much we have to re-member and re-learn.
Only when we truly seek with all our hearts and soul to love another, as we love ourselves, and then the Divine above all, can we experience the very depth of the Mystery of the Sacred Fire itself.
Such is cosmic law.
If one does not honor cosmic law, one will reap what one has sown, and that is pain and suffering, and destruction.
Inherently the greater return to the higher state of Balance, lies in the understanding of soul relationships and in the higher understanding of the sexual energy, as in the Sacred Fire.
Without that we cannot truly find a new and higher ways of loving each other, and finding that beautiful sacred union, that is the ultimate gift from God.
May 2015 bring this understanding to all who read this now.
This is an adventure and a deep unfolding in itself and only those who seek, truly seek with an honest and open heart, will find the keys and codes given to them to unlock the sacred fire.
Such is the importance of this time!
Let those who have ears listen and those who hear, hear!
(Judith Kusel)
http://www.judithkusel.com

Becoming consciously aware

Posted  by Judith Kusel 

Expanded consciousness comes through constant awareness.  To whatever we bring our awareness and focus, that is where we will charge ourselves the most.
Awareness essentially means that we become more aware of what is going on within us – our thoughts, our feelings, our values, that which makes our spirits soar and fly.  That which inspires us, which moves us to tears of awe, that which brings us peace and harmony.
If we constantly focus on what makes us angry, agitated, stressed etc. then that is where our awareness will focus on.
Whatever we now are aware of the most, is what we will attract more of into our lives.
None more so than in our human relationships, which these are in the microcosm of our inner own selves, or in the macrocosm and what is going on around us in society and in the world at large.
For instance:  If you constantly are bombarded with bad news, with sensational bad news, and how bad people are, then you start believing that, and when you start believing that, you will attract exactly that into your life which will reinforce your belief system.
If you however chose to focus on the goodness, the harmony, the balance in life, and what you can be grateful for, like the simple everyday life around you, that you can truly feel happy about.  Most of that which bring inner harmony and happiness, is meditation, nature, a smile, an uplifting message from a dear one, a phone call, a good news story, the caring kindnesses that never make the headlines, for the bad news sells, and good news does not.
I call this tweaking: – I consciously chose to tweak my seeing, and I choose to see the balance in everything.  I choose to choose love over fear; I choose to choose harmony over discontentment, I to open myself to the endless possibilities of life to bring more goodness and abundance into my life, and to teach more and more lessons to love myself and others more.  I choose to appreciate the little mundane things, and I choose to be grateful for all the blessings in my life.
When so-called bad things come into my life, I immediately choose to look for the opposite for there is always an upside to a downside.  To every sorrow there is a hidden blessing – everything that happens in life always will have its central opposite somewhere because the cosmos is in balance and never out of balance.
This is essentially what conscious living is all about: one becomes consciously aware of what one is creation INSIDE.
You can choose to harp on all that is imperfect in your Beloved, on his or her bad habits that are driving you crazy, etc. or you can focus on how his or her behavior is leading you back to yourself, and to facing the same shadow side you see in him or her inside of yourself.  For deep down you know that you cannot change your partner – you can only change yourself.
If you choose to love, and keep your heart open no matter what you choose to see the love in the other – no matter what.  That does not mean that you let him or her walk all over you, it means that you will not close your heart and will find that worthiness inside yourself and then choose to find ways of finding the blessing in all and everything.  That also means standing up for yourself and putting boundaries down is necessary, walking away, but never ever closing your heart.
More than this you can only raise your consciousness, by doing the inner work.  We all have energy bodies which are far more potent than our physical bodies are.  Although they work in tandem with our physical bodies, they have much larger energy fields and when these are activated, if will force us to cleanse and clear all emotional baggage and all which tends to clog up our energy systems.
The collapsing of emotional chargest raises our vibrational frequencies and it brings that inner harmony which essentially assists us to stay in that inner loving space, no matter how the storms rage around us.
A lot of people never get round to even acknowledging their own souls and are so lost in the dense and physical world that they cannot see past the veils of illusion and see the immensity of cosmic life, and living which is vaster than all this dense physical world will ever be able to give us.
With soul relationships especially we tend to draw into our lives those souls we have loved and known through many lifetimes.  However, the old patterns which were negative so often repeat themselves, and we have to learn to create new and healthier patterns.
When I do my Twin Flame Soul Readings, which focus on relationships, whether Twin Flame of not, most people come back to me, after the crux of where the pattern started are revealed and say:  “Deep down I have always known this, but I ignored this.”  “Or now I finally understand why I have these feelings and why I cannot open myself up totally sexually.”
Whatever, there dawns an understanding that the pattern has repeated itself and they need to do the inner work now, in order to heal the emotional pain and let go of all the baggage.  When this inner work is done, then the old patterns dissolve and new patterns can be created which are more loving and positive.
I have had to do immense inner releasing work in these last few years, and all I can say it is infinitely worthwhile.
Whatever you collapse in emotional pain and baggage makes space for more love and greater ability to love in your life.  You start loving with an open heart and you start trusting again – in deep and profound levels.
When you break through all the dross, all the negative clouds and warped seeing, thinking, acting and being and see the immense beauty of the Beloved – the immense beauty and love of the soul, then you change.  Something deep inside of your shifts and then you can embrace the Beloved totally – because you come from the place of total love deep inside of yourself!  You become appreciative of the Beloved in ways you could never do before and you expand in loving – even your sexual self opens up in higher and more profound ways to embrace the other, because your whole energy fields are now positively charged and not negatively programmed.
Again, this is a conscious shift INSIDE, in the inner chambers of the heart and soul, and the mind then shifts its thinking, for the heart has shifted.
Such is the immensity of Being in this time, that we now have the opportunity to create new and more loving relationships, as we open ourselves to be re-created into WHOLENESS once more – the wholeness that is there deep within our souls, and then when we embrace our own wholeness we can finally embrace the wholeness in the other and indeed in all creation!
(Judith Kusel)
For Soul and Twin Flame readings and other information:  http://www.judithkusel.com/home

The Twin Flames and the Joker….. the Challenge of the Twin flame relationship

Posted by Judith Kusel 

Eye meets eye…
Soul recognizes soul…
And the eternal dance of Love is re-ignited and has come from eternity….
I have written various articles on Twin-flames on this blog, and I get letters from all over the world asking me questions regarding their twin flames, as slowly realization is dawning, that meeting the Twin Flame might be like meeting to other half or yourself, but brings with it its own challenges.
I am writing this today because of three letters I got where the person has met the Twin flame (or presumes this – for often soul mates are confused with Twin flames, or the infatuation is such that one believes this person to be a twin, when it is not so), and then finds that the sex might be great, and the communication too, but the reality is that twin is not free or cannot be fully present in the relationship,  or is behaving in a manner which is causing pain.
Sometimes patterns which were created over many lifetimes come to haunt them in this life, and unless those are released and new ones’ created, the same old destructive patterns will repeat themselves.  For not all were angels in previous lives – indeed some were anything but.  (That is why I love doing soul readings, for it will pinpoint where the pattern started, and how it is busy being repeated in this lifetime).
All relationships on this planet, cannot be based just on sex – however great the sex is: – at the beginning you cannot take the hands off each other and then later wonder how to get the spark going again, as reality starts dawning.  For after the infatuation wears off and the sex, one still has to put up with the habits of the partner which irritates the living daylights out of one, or with the ex spouse, children, and everyone else who was there before the two met, and after the two met: – the ex’s don’t just disappear, nor the children, nor the parents, nor the friends and families.  When chaos was created, it will remain chaos until order is restored, and balance.
Any relationship has great hidden lessons, and the greatest lesson of all, is more applicable for Twin flames that mirror each other more than any other, is that of CHALLENGE.  Yes, it is a challenge to love oneself totally, utterly and completely – warts and all, shadow and light without a mask to hind behind: – and love another warts and all, shadow and light without a mask that they can hide behind.
I had a very interesting chat to one of my friends who is a marriage counselor.  He pointed out that he counsels couples BEFORE they get married, and deals with each partner separately.  He said that he can immediately spot where the two will have big challenges in their married life, as they differ completely in the way they handle and live their lives.
In this instance, the twin then might be a part of your own soul, but the lighter you are, the darker he will be – the more of a perfectionist you are – the more laid-back he will be.  You might be brilliant with money matters and a billionaire, and she has not sense of money and spends all etc.
In Afrikaans they have a lovely term to name this:  “die klein jakkalsies” (the little jackals – become big jackals).   In the beginning when one cannot take the hands off each other, one is so sexually charged, and adrenalin junkies, that those little jackals are not noted – like him squeezing the toothpaste in the middle, while you neatly roll it up.  He leaves his clothes all over the place, and you neatly have yours all labeled and boxed.  You are happy-go-lucky and he dissects all and everything.  You love all that you can love just as they are, and he goes and wants to label everything in his mind, and then label you too – like putting you in his laboratory and then making sure you react exactly as he tells you too…
To me this is the trump card:  THE JOKER.
The Joker is the trickster and in as much as the twins can’t keep their hands off each other and their minds too (most of the times with women, and with men with their neatly boxed mind, that is when he is not fully busy somewhere else which might be about once a day – unless he is thinking of sex he he!  He has a box in his mind neatly labeled with your name (and others) written on it.  When he has finished the box he is currently busy with, and wants to take out the next, he might consider yours)
The Joker and trickster appear to teach us a beautiful lesson:  YOU CAN NOT MAKE ANYONE HAPPY NOR FULFILL THEM.  It is impossible – even if it is your twin flame.
So there you are having this amazing sex, and you are having orgasms and what not, and he just jumps out of bed, into his clothes and off he goes home to this wife  (or to his laptop and work)– after all he has commitments and obligations there, for even as much as he loves you, he loves his job, kids too and his wife (even if he says he hates her, he does care for her in his own way).  The fact is that his way of earning a living takes priority, even over you.  You will never be number one on his list.
You think to yourself:  “Have I not satisfied him?  Have I been too much or too little?” And beat yourself up.
And the Joker sits there and has a good laugh……
The fact is that he cannot make you happy, just like he could not make his wife happy, just like he could not make anyone happy.  He is not God.
The fact is that only you can make yourself happy, and decide to be happy and do the inner work necessary to love yourself so much, that whether he is in your life – or not – makes no difference.  If he is there, you do not attach to him so much, that you are miserable when he is gone.  For as much as you love having him there – as much you love having yourself to yourself and enjoy your own company.  So if he suddenly disappears with floozie next door, then you are not in a state of trauma, but can merrily carry on without him (see how fast that brings him back).
A lot of people have this constant NEEDINESS.  As long as you feel needy, and whine about have little he/she loves you, the needier you will become.
Nobody likes to have a needy person around, for at some time or another the other will get fed-up and walk out.
We are not meant to be needy persons.  We are not meant to beg for love or attention, and neither are we meant to be doormats and have others walking all over us and wiping their feet on us.  Nobody respects a needy person and definitely not doormats.
The more empowered you become from deep inside, and the more you love yourself and nurture that depth of soul and joyful beingness inside of you, the less needy you become.  The more you enjoy your own company, and love conversing with your soul, and nurture yourself, body, mind, spirit and soul, the less you need someone else to make you happy.
That does not mean that you do not wish to be a relationship.  It is just that you are so content with yourself that you can love another freely without trying to own him or her, or to manipulate, or control or whine with neediness and constant begging to be loved.
There is something immensely attractive and sexy about a woman who is empowered from deep within – and the same goes with a man.
They emit a radiance, and inner state of balance and equilibrium which shines through.  They do not need to be perfect nor beautiful in the sense the world sees it, but when they enter a room they have a presence, which makes everyone notice them.  That is because they are empowered from deep within.  They have done the inner work, they have come to love themselves totally and unconditionally and then, when they do meet up with someone (note: someone – not necessarily the twin) they love wholeheartedly, without attaching.  That means they love so much, that when that someone is taken away from them tomorrow, that love will still be there – wholeheartedly, even if the person has moved on.
Why?  Because they know that love is eternally there.  Love has been there ad infinitum.  It does not matter how the person is behaving, or not behaving, doing or not doing in this life – you love that soul – no matter what, just like you love yourself – no matter what.
You love because that is the state that you are constantly in.
That state is not affected by anyone else – for you are solely in control of that state.  That is your heart domain, and you cannot always choose the circumstances, or what happens, but you can choose your RE-ACTIONS to that.
When you move back into your heart and soul, then you will understand that one cannot let the inner working lasp  For you have a lot of emotional stuff to work through and let go, and even if you switch partners like shoes, that emotional baggage will still be there, if you do not let go of it.  Some people take all the baggage from one relationship into the next and the next and the next – the same old patterns.  The switching of partners does not resolve that baggage, indeed it gets worse – then they end up blaming their partners for their own inner unhappiness, when in reality they have not healed inside.
So, remember, that with the Twin flame, all the baggage will get amplified, because the Twin will mirror back to you everything that you have not owned, nor made peace with deep within YOURSELF.
No one can skip the inner work.  You can try, but it will come in the form of the Joker, until you finally understand and master the lesson.
That is the reality of life.
Yes, the twin can and does bring ecstasy, bliss and euphoria, but he or she will also bring that inner work that needs to be done – bang slap to your own heart, and there will be a big label on it that reads:  “INNER HOUSEKEEPING AND CLEARING TO BE DONE!”
(Judith Kusel http://www.judith-kusel.com)

The rebirth of Mother Earth….. and Humanity’s Lesson to Master…..

Posted by Judith Kusel 

We are entering a time of profound earth changes as the inner core earth mass is shifting.  When I talk about mass I talk about a type of substance that is like a river of fluidity at the moment, as the inner earth is inhabited and called Agartha.  This is the outer crust of the inner earth, and then what we know as the upper earth, the inner core crust.
I see this as a type of molten rock, or quartz and this is in the process of reforming into something else, as the ancient energy centers, which were laid down at the very beginning when the earth was created, are now awakening more and more.  Please note that this was the FIRST, millions of years BEFORE Atlantis, Lemuria, Mu, the Lyran civilization in what is now North Africa and the Mediterranean and the Ural Mountains and Siberia.  Thus the VERY first and the other civilizations were more of less built on the remains of what used to be that first civilization.
I was most interested in my own research and delving ever deeper into the geology of Southern Africa, where scientists come to the conclusion that they was a much older SUPER CONTINENT millions of years ago – even older than the ones they already have pieced together.
It is this Super Continent that I am referring to when I speak about energy centers, and I NOT referring to the so-called Web of Light, which had its origin much later, after this first civilization was completely destroyed because of immense catastrophes which happened then which involved asteroids, comets etc. hitting the planet because of the immense damage the blowing up of Marduk, the planet between Mars and Jupiter caused at the time.
As the earth is now being revamped in her quest to move into the higher dimensional states these energy centers are being reopened, as they were sealed off during these immense upheavals, and then emerged in part in Lemuria and Mu.  However with the simultaneous rising of Atlantis, some scientists started abusing the energy resources, and therefore these centers were purposefully closed down again, to prevent some of this scientist from literally blowing up planet earth.
As the Intergalactic counsel had vowed that they would never allow another planet to blow itself up, because of the havoc it wreaked in the whole galaxy and solar system, with planets like the earth being thrown out of orbit, these centers were then closed down, until such time as mankind would reach maturity again, and stop their self-destructive ways.
I was in the last three months often told to look up where the volcanoes were on the planet – and not just the active ones but the inactive ones as well.  In that my attention was specifically drawn to Chile, the South American and North American North coast’s and what is hidden in the Pacific Ocean, and then also to the east coast of America, the islands offshore in the Atlantic ocean, and then the top eastern parts of South America.
My attention was drawn to specific areas where there is an immense movement of energies, and as said this is liquefied – I hesitate to use the word liquid, for it is a churning mass and glow red copper, gold, platinum, and sometimes a fiery red-orange.
In the western parts, this is then is what happened in the time when the landmass between South America and the Easter Islands sunk into the sea.  The Easter Islands are a remnant of the first civilization and they kind of held the energy grids together.  They were the ones who built the very huge structures in South America which the Incas did not built, but were built long before the Incan civilization.
One of the most important energy grid lines goes straight through these centers and links to the Easter Islands and then moves in a triangular fashion towards the west coast of America and then straight towards the Yellowstone National Park, where the energy then moves down again towards Chile.  That whole grid is one boiling mass of this energy and therefore everything there is immensely unstable at the moment and this will cause a lot of movement there – whether these are earthquakes, volcanoes erupting, or just like earth tearing and sink holes appearing, it is then literally a transformation of the upper earth in lieu of the transformation in the inner earth.
The east coast links up to Atlantis, and in certain parts of the east coast very unstable nuclear laser beams were used by those in charge of Atlantis in its last days, to bombard certain cities held within the region that refused to bow to their demands.  This whole region, in a massive triangular fashion, used to house the Goddess energy temples and the Goddess energy grids.  As these nuclear laser heads then designated a lot of that region has immense earth faults, for want of better word, which means that the underneath the ocean there is a type of movement in the earth plating systems, and then on the land mass itself, these are shifting as well.
As the designation of these nuclear devices caused mass destruction in those areas, the Goddess energy grids there are so clogged up, that this is causing something like a heart attack – when the arteries of human body are so clogged up it causes heart attacks, well this is similar.  So literally a type of shocking or contraction movement there and it will take a massive effort from those who can clear energy lines to work with these areas, even in small portions and then go immensely deep.
On the other side of the world Japan, China, the Asian islands and Australia and New Zealand with the pacific islands are in for mass changes as the old land mass is rising.  This is movement of immense scale and is bringing about a rising of the ocean floor in many places and this is moving upwards which could mean that the ocean can start boiling at places and also like geysers erupting, and volcanoes might start rumbling more and more.
The same applies to those areas where there have been volcanic outbursts in the past especially in upper parts of Africa, and then also Europe and even some in the Nordic countries.   At the moment the middle part of the earth (as in longitude) is more sheltered as the rumblings are on either side of these areas, but with all being so unstable everything is possible.
To me this is all part of the rebirthing of Mother Earth and therefore nothing to fear.  We have to understand that those souls who lose their lives in these places have known that this would happen at some level before they even incarnated and were drawn to those places to do extra service work.  They knew that with the cleansing of the earth that they would assist the process by then leaving the planet, as all of this will assist the rebirth of the planet and humanity at large.
If you read the geological history of planet earth you will realize that all of this is nothing new and that this has occurred many times on this planet before.  In essence we are but passengers on Mothership Earth, and therefore she can evacuate us at any time in order for her own rebirthing.  Most often we tend to forget this and we forget to honor her soul and tend to make her ‘soul-less’, ‘life-less”.  Not so, she is a living, breathing entity in her own right and we are given life on this planet with her consent – she allows us here and therefore in reality what are we?
We were meant to a custodian or keepers of planet earth.  Yet so many times we destroy willfully what has been given to us and nowhere was this lesson honed in more than in Atlantis.
Most of the souls who were involved in the final and heydays of Atlantis have incarnated and this is like Atlantis all over again.
In Atlantis there was a mass abuse of power.
In this lifetime human beings’ greatest lesson will be to learn to master POWER and to use it in a way which enhances life and builds up and not destroys.
Whether we have mastered this lesson will show itself in the next few years.
Yet, Mother Earth is in her rebirth stage – whether we learn our lessons or not.
I personally love this time for it is a time when we finally can step past all the dross and trauma of Atlantis, and learn self-mastery, and with learning self-mastery we finally can step into a much higher octave of Being, which will be the new 5^th – 7^th dimensional state of Being, where we finally learnt to step fully in the responsible role of co-creators.  However if we are not willing to master the lessons, then we cannot enter the New Earth.
It is all about mastery of energies, within and without.
(Judith Kusel)
http://www.judithkusel.com

The Cosmic merging of Twin Flames

Posted by Judith Kusel 

There comes a time in Twin Flame Love when all the old squabbles, the old discord, that which makes one run away, and then towards each other again, fades away.
That first adrenalin rush has settled.
Those moments of pain – and all that was there in one form or another, is slowly fading away.
One starts now to move more and more into a stage where the inner YOU, has gone through transformation and you have become whole in many ways.  Before the insecurities, the low self-worth, all the old dragons that used to haunt you, are slowly but surely disintegrating.
A new you has emerged – a greater and more balanced you, that revels in that sacred sanctuary of your heart, womb and soul, and finds that life indeed is just a matter of loving and that one can love in new and more profound ways than ever before.
It is not so much that twin has changed – as one has changed.
It is not so much that one finds the other in a different way – it is because the neediness that you once felt has vaporized before the inner Sun now emerging deep within yourself and your old fears and all the old patterns have dissolved for they no longer serve your highest soul growth and good.
When all has been said and done, only love remains.
The love for yourself.
The love for the Divine Other.
And more than this, it is a love which grows through each moment of union, through each moment of bliss, through each moment when one feels intense unity in motion – that cosmic merging which is truly not of this world.
It is then that one finally realizes that the Power of Love spans all dimensions of space and it is ever expanding upon itself – ad infinitum.
It is not earthly bound.
It is cosmic love, which has been there since the very beginning and will be there eternally.
Just for this moment, this single moment, you are united as one.  Yes ONE.
Two Soul souls merging into the greater God-fire, God-flame and this is what resurrection is all about.
It is not so much found in gazing at other as moving towards, looking outwards, merging towards a greater cosmic movement, where this merging is used in Higher Soul Service, and in merging one is paving the way for infinity to move into conscious Being on planet Earth.
There is a joy, a delighting in each other, and sometimes that profound moment, when one is moved to tears – tears of awe, gratitude and intense love.  That love is so great that heart opens to the very core and in the merger, one expands to that state, where words are superfluous and tears of immense grace and gratitude mingle.
One has touched the heart and soul of the Divine in sacred union.
One is that which is the Sacred Divine Merging.
Such is the ultimate blessing of Twin Flame Union – that moving into the infinite space of the true merging of soul with soul, body with body, heart with heart, love with love.
Supreme euphoria and bliss.
(Judith Kusel)
http://www.judithkusel.com

Archetype of Wholeness: Jung and the Mandala

         

 

 

Peter Patrick Barreda, Guest
Waking Times
In his writings on mandala symbolism, Carl Jung refers to the mandala as “the psychological expression of the totality of the self.” Within everyone’s psyche, to one degree or another, can be found a seed-center of the self surrounded by a chaotic maelstrom of issues, fears, passions and countless other psychological elements. It is the very disordered state of these elements that creates the discord and emotional imbalances from which too many of us suffer on a regular basis. The mandala is a template for the mind, a state of peace and order, a resolution of the chaos within. In Jung’s words,

“The severe pattern imposed by a circular image of this kind compensates the disorder and confusion of the psychic state—namely, through the construction of a central point to which everything is related.”

This central point is the absolute seat of the self, the anchor for all the extraneous elements of your environment and your psyche. In actuality these two are not separate entities, rather they are intimately combined, inextricably linked. The effects of the world within and the world without are often indistinguishable as far as your self is concerned. Internal elements (ideas, emotions, compulsions) interact freely with external elements (news, relationships, taxes) in the interface that is your mind. Understanding this exchange helps us see more clearly how certain patterns and symbolic elements from our most ancient origins have been internalized and carried through the ages, only to be unconsciously externalized in the beauty of the mandala.
Ritualistic mandalas from specific cultures display a style and variety of elements with special significance to that culture. There are nearly as many types of mandalas as there have been societies in the history of Humankind. But the essence of the pattern of the mandala, the “squaring of the circle,” is a basic motif in the architecture of so many dreams and fantasies whose unifying similarities stretch across the ages. The quaternary pattern imposed upon the circle symbolizes the application of an orderly architecture upon the infinity of the cosmos. It gives the psyche a safe place on which to stand, a solid foundation upon which it can gather itself to achieve completeness and harmony. Furthermore, the central point, or bindu, is the reference point for the self to identify with. Jung refers to this pattern as the “archetype of wholeness.”

This ordering effect on the human psyche is not, Jung stresses, the result of conscious reflection or cultural effort. It is a pre-existing condition of consciousness that such patterns help bring it into focus or return to an earlier, more peaceful state. This is why Jung found the mandala to be present in so many cultures and mythologies spanning the globe and the history of Humanity itself. It is an integral part of the collective unconscious that is shared by every person that has ever lived. The mandala is an unconscious state in which all opposites come together and are united, where the polar aspects of the cosmos and the individual can become one. This union of opposites is the very process by which we achieve wholeness, and through which we find peace.
A great deal of Jung’s psychotherapy dealt with the interpretation of individual mandalas created by his patients. In addition to the soothing, focusing effect he noted as a result in his patients’ psychological states, there was also a great deal of commonality between the images they created. Patients who had no prior knowledge of mandalas or any other conscious symbolistic expression repeatedly put to paper strikingly similar images in the course of their progress. Jung writes of the significance of these similarities:

“In view of the fact that all the mandalas shown here were new and uninfluenced products, we are driven to the conclusion that there must be a transconscious disposition in every individual which is able to produce the same or very similar symbols at all times and in all places. Since this disposition is usually not a conscious possession of the individual I have called it the collective unconscious, and, as the basis of its symbolical products, I postulate the existence of primordial images, the archetypes.”

It is these archetypes, ageless connections between every conscious being, in conjunction with the elemental pattern of the quaternary and the cardinal points, that create the powerful effect the mandala exhibits on the human psyche. It is as if there were a common reference point at which all our seemingly individual consciousnesses are connected, and it is from this realm that the form and effect of the mandala are drawn. The mandala can be considered a blueprint for the essential structure of our existence, and something about this structure is instantly recognized by the unconscious within us. We perceive the shapes, the patterns, the elements within the mandala, we see their relationships to each other, and within that sacred matrix we recognize our self and our place in the cosmos. It is an ancient and fundamental relationship from which we have strayed. The mandala is the key that can help us return to it.
Jung also equates the mandala with the eye in form as well as spirit, stating that “the eye is the prototype for the mandala.” The eye symbolizes seeing and light, and therefore consciousness itself. The eye is the part of us that beholds the universe and sees our place in it. It is knowledge, awareness and wisdom. The eye takes in light, the pure energy of the universe, and presents it to the inner spirit. It is the gateway, indeed the very union, between the self and the cosmos. As is the mandala. In addition to the structural similarities between the eye and the mandala, the image of the eye is a common element in individual mandalas. Often one can find a repeating pattern of eyes in a mandala. Jung refers to this as polyopthalmia (many-eyed), and considers this a representation of the unconscious as multiple consciousnesses.
It is evident that the mandala is the link, albeit a mysterious one, between our modern consciousness and our most ancient origins. Jung concluded that “their basic motif is the premonition of a center of personality, a kind of central point within the psyche, to which everything is related, by which everything is arranged, and which is itself a source of energy.” Somewhere in the vast, forgotten reaches of time lies the answer to this wondrous mystery, but also does it lay, quiet and dormant, deep within each one of us. It is for us to rediscover, and to cherish. It is for us to hold this inexhaustible source of energy close to our hearts. Within it we will discover ourselves, we will find each other, and we will reconnect with the essential center of existence.

About the Author

Peter Patrick Barreda is a mandala artist, occasional writer, chronic over-thinker, and webmaster of mandalaZone.com. He is fascinated by origins and causes, and the deeply-hidden reasons behind everything. He believes that mandalas are the underlying pattern for everything in the universe—physical, mental and spiritual, though at their core these three are essentially one. Please visit his fascinating website, where this article was originally featured.

source- http://www.wakingtimes.com/2015/05/15/archetype-of-wholeness-jung-and-the-mandala/

http://www.wakingtimes.com/2015/05/05/5-simple-techniques-that-will-build-chi-and-remove-negative-energy/

5 Simple Techniques That will Build Chi and Remove Negative Energy

         

 

 

Waking Times
Video – Chi Gong (also spelled Qi Gong) and Tai Chi are ancient Chinese healing energy exercises and techniques. They combine simple movements with thoughts and intentions, resulting in a healthier body, increase energy, reduced toxicity, and a relaxed mind.
Shown in this video are five simple techniques that will build chi – the prana that moves throughout the human body – and remove negative energy. For guided meditations and more about Chi Gong, visit www.TheArtofUnity.com/chigong
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http://www.wakingtimes.com/2015/05/05/5-simple-techniques-that-will-build-chi-and-remove-negative-energy/