Happy Friday!
I hope your weekend has begun, or is about to begin.
I will be working with a client for the next four days, but this client is one of the best students I’ve ever worked with, so it won’t be so much like work, but more like joy-filled sharing.
The World Soul
I had this vision emerge in me the other night as I picked up my art pad and headed toward my pens. I could see a big bird, and felt the presence of a totem structure, but wasn’t sure how to draw what I was intuiting.
I sat down and let my soul guide my pens and this is what my soul shared with me so I can share it with you.
Here is a little breakdown of the symbolic meanings contained within my art piece:
The Bird: The bird is a common metaphysical symbol for the soul; the soul flies into higher-vibrational states when the physical body dies, or when we use our intuition, or when dreaming.
The bird gathers seeds, pollens, insects, parasites, and flies to other regions to spread them. The soul-bird within us does the same thing. When we have love, empathy, or compassion for someone, we are connecting to them through our soul (consciousness).
Just as a bird migrates, our soul-bird knows its own migratory path so-to-speak; we all have experiences of sensing that our direction isn’t taking us where we want to be from time to time. This comes from the guidance of our soul.
The quality of “abiding” is an inherent quality of the soul. The soul can be seen of as the wholeness of ourselves, or it can be seen as the axle of our own evolution; just as the axle of the front wheels of your car doesn’t “do anything”, but is essential to your arrival by wheels.
When we have an inner sense of heaviness, separation, or angst, our soul-bird is telling us that we are moving off our migratory (soul) path.
Because the soul isn’t a “thing”, and is whole in and of itself, there is no fear of death, or even fear at all at the level of the soul. Therefore, the soul doesn’t commandeer us when going off our soul-path.
The soul is like a little child that loves to try everything and anything; if you want to ignore the subtle guidance of your inner-voice, or inner-light, or inner-feeling, your soul will go along with it fully.
Because the soul of ourselves is the Unconditional Love of ourselves, and is fully invested in exploring itself, the only direction for the soul is the process of experiencing the ego fully.
The ego offers the sense of individuality and individual creative self-expression. Without the ego, the soul can’t experience itself as separate from any other soul – Whole is Whole.
Just as each beam of sunlight reaches out from the sun to touch something potentially different, and it is the sun having all such experiences, the soul is as a ray of the Divine Sun, each having a unique experience of individuality, yet consciously experienced in and as the life of The One.
The soul’s journey is complete when the ego fully heals and there is no longer any need or desire for perceived separation or individuation.
If along the way, we don’t listen to our soul’s guidance, we are given an opportunity to experience our creative powers.
If that means that the PainTeacher emerges to give us the redirection we need at a volume our physical ears (metaphorically) can here, then so it is; we get to experience our creations so we can take responsibility for our godliness; our capacity to express and experience our creations fully.
The World Soul bird in my drawing is holding the left (yin-feminine) wing up, as though creating a curtain between the world, and the emptiness of space. She is saying that our egos only know about life under the soul’s wing, and that our ego-mind isn’t aware of what is outside its own idea construct.
A person without a relationship with their soul is very likely to be fearful when exposed to ideas outside the grasp of intellect, or imagination. Such experiences are invitations from the soul to use your time in a body on earth to learn the language and art of love, which is a Universal Language, and a Universal Art.
Once we become healthy, whole human beings in the earth plane, we have learned enough about life, love and Great Spirit to become willing participants in a Universal Community.
At this point, we learn that the earth is a nursery, and the body a cocoon, out of which a citizen of the Universe emerges just as a caterpillar emerges from its cocoon to become a butterfly.
The Tent: The tent represents having a home; a place for our own unique life and worship to unfold. The tent also represents life and death; you can see animal forms, emerging as imprints in the soil.
In our tent (home) we sacrifice the lives of other living beings, such as plants and animals, so we can further our own life. Therefore, the tent also represents that what appears before you, or as you now, was something else not long ago.
The tent creates the impression that space can be segregated. This is the illusion created by the ego.
The space in the tent is identical to the space outside the tent. We have just constructed an artificial barrier to create the illusion of separation; if someone yells at you from outside your tent, you feel it and hear it within your tent.
The wall creates an illusion of impenetrability, just as the ego, and the body does.
The Fire: The fire symbolizes transformation. Without fire, there wouldn’t be any movement. Without movement, we couldn’t experience time, and therefore, we could have no memories of “this time, or that time” in our lives.
Fire means, “this becomes that and that becomes this”. It is a symbol of the perpetual fires of spiritual self-realization, which ultimately leads to enlightenment experiences or Self-Realization.
The smoke rises from the fire, through the roof of the tent. The left wing of the World Soul bird acts as the chimney. The smoke represents death; loss of a body. Notice the smoke rises into the world of the unknown, the Black.
The World Soul bird holds Her wing up to touch the fringes of perceived reality; She is informing us that our egos can’t function or survive outside the cocoon created by Mother Earth and our embodiment as ego-minds.
She is informing us that only when we are united with her, The World Soul, will we have the consciousness needed to stay awake and actively participate in our journey after physical death.
The Water: The water represents connection, emotion, and the capacity for life. In many ways, water symbolizes love, for what is love if it isn’t connection and the flow of energy and information?
The Earth: The earth is symbolized as the earth, and the grass; the grass represents the relentless pursuit of life, even after having your head chopped off repeatedly!
The earth symbolizes embodiment. To be embodied represents having a field of experience. The soul can’t realize itself without matter for the same reason that one mirror can’t know itself by looking into another mirror.
If you had a conscious mirror with a red dot on it, and another one with a black dot on it, they could easily recognize the difference between themselves. Without this “material signifier”, the soul would have nothing to play with; it would be like a kid in an empty sand box with no toys.
Just as your body is the place where your soul and mind have experiences, the earth is where body-minds have experiences, which also turn out to be Her experiences.
SHE: Mother Earth is represented esoterically. Stand back from the image several feet. Look at the fire in the tent and you will see Her head as the fire, and Her hair as the rising flames and smoke.
The animal forms represent her left and right arms. Her breasts are between her arms. The pathway leading to the door of the tent is her dress.
Mother Earth gives us her everything. She devotes herself to providing what we need to become Self-Realized Citizens Of The Universe. She represents empathy and compassion without reservation. She represents Love.
I enjoyed creating this drawing and the meditative experiences that came with it.
Well, that’s my little show-n-tell for today.
I hope that in some way, you feel inspired to grow spiritually, and experience your consciousness as one with the World Soul, the gateway to the Universe.
Love and chi,
Paul Chek
