Happy Monday!
I hope you’ve all been enjoying the experience of “being you,” and that you had a restful weekend.
In this blog, I’ll share how to meet and manage your “food dragons”, and share tips for cultivating holistic thinking in your life.
I will also share highlights from recent CHEK Advanced Training Programs, reason not to complain about it being too cold to work-in, and my most recently finished painting.
Managing Your Food Dragons
As most of you are well aware that I’ve spent most of my adult life (probably all of it actually) coaching other people through the many challenges of body, life, mind and spiritual challenges. In my blog today, I refer to the challenges we often seem to be plagued with as “dragons”…
Dragons: Virtual beings of spirit (energy in action), enlivened by one’s own conscious or unconscious drives, motives, intentions, or values.
– Dragons are comfortable gestating, living and acting within (our) shadows.
– Dragons leave traces (bite marks, claw marks, or footprints) as “symptoms” within the body-mind complex.
The traces (bite marks, claw marks or footprints) our dragons leave are exemplified in my vlog presentation today as our “symptoms”, and I talk about them in the later parts of my presentation.
Jung’s Consciousness Compass is a means of helping others understand:
– How their dragons are created, and
– Why they often have symptoms that they “don’t want”, and that often
– “Indicate that their theory and practice don’t create harmony within”
I refer to Jung to bring some clarity to your own understanding of the nature of mind and how to use it.
To exemplify how Jung’s four essential modes of consciousness can be used to create holistic thinking (perception), I use the idea of “milk”, and then explain thinking, feeling, sensation, and intuition as they related to Jung’s consciousness compass.
I then build on the concept of “dragons” and how we can use our symptoms in combination with awareness of the 4 ways we need to explore and appreciate our thoughts, sensations, feelings and intuitions for a more grounded, holistic perspective.
I hope you enjoy my vlog today!
If you have friends or family suffering from “their own dragons” and want to support them in their own Self-Realization, please feel free to share my blog post or send them to my youtube channel at www.youtube.com/paulcheklive
Work-In Anyone?
Here you can see my client Jason doing tai-chi in the very cold snow in the New York mountains.
I regularly hear from people that “they didn’t get to do their work-in lately because it’s been too cold outside.” The secret is to “engage the elements”, that are part of you, and you are an expression of them.
We must remember that exposing ourselves to changing environments and temperatures, as well as a variety of food types, helps keep us strong on the “inside”.
We live in an era of “fit sick people” that look good in the mirror, but are often very unhealthy “inside”. We can change that by better understanding what our bodies need to be healthy, which is “not to get too far from nature (and our authentic nature).
Recently Completed CHEK Advanced Training Programs
Tomi Toles, CHEK Faculty, headed out to San Diego to teach C.H.E.K Exercise Coach course last week a day early in hopes of avoiding travel delays…and a good decision that was!
Tomi and I got to visit a couple times while he was here teaching, and as you can see in the photo, he collected some lovely oranges from my trees to share with the students.
I hope you all enjoyed the love of my garden in class!
It was really nice out as Tomi’s friends and family were freezing their butts of in NYC, so Tomi treated the students to an opportunity to master program design in the sunshine.
He has nothing but great things to say about his students, and was having a great time teaching them. It always excites me to see my instructors living their dream, feeling so alive, and attracting students of like kind.
Thanks Tomi and to all the students for attending C.H.E.K Exercise Coach!
Ego Meets Soul
I took the time to finish the painting I shared from my last blog when Ryan Hughes was here painting with me.
I had a great time creating it. I started with no idea at all as to what I was painting (which is usual for me), and just let my soul guide me step-by-step.
As it emerged, I could interpret the symbols; the left eye is a carnivorous fish… eating and shitting and eating and shitting… this is the nature of the ego.
The right eye expresses a metaphysical fish that “witnesses” as the ego executes the desires of the soul, or as the ego ignores the soul (or tries to eat and kill it, as is often the case when we inflict ourselves with sex and violence loving).
The person in the middle of it all expresses the polarity of ego and soul in and as “life.” Each of us is a unique individual, yet we are all collectively an expression of the Divine, or the Universe, depending on your spiritual orientation.
Notice that the pupil of the right eye is the letter ‘I’, which stands for ego; being in the “soul’s eye” so-to-speak suggests that the soul is aware of itself as both an individual, and as an element of a larger, more grand Wholeness; therefore, the soul’s ‘I’ can see clearly.
The ego’s pupil only sees and comprehends what “it believes” as a general them, for better or worse.
Getting these two fish to “swim together” is the essential motive of “the spiritual life”.
I hope you enjoyed my blog and vlog today.
I look forward to sharing something new with you next week.
Love and chi,
Paul Chek
