Hello!
Thank you for the beautiful comments several of you have shared with me by the blog site or in person during this series. It gives me levity, which is useful when I’m trying to find time in my busy day to share on the blog.
Today, I’m excited to have a group of student’s over for a day in my zen garden! I have great day planned and we will have a fantastic day with the earth, rain and nature elementals, the rocks, and of course with each other.
So now we will continue our journey.
The Intellectual-soul
Here in my first image, you can see an overview of much of what we’ve discussed with regard to both the child’s physical, mental and spiritual development.
Note the importance of unbound creativity and support by loving guides or elders who are truly ready to parent or guide children because, first and foremost, they are authentic adults who are capable of meeting their own needs! The first obligation of a parent is to create safety and security for themselves, and share that process with their children. This allows the child to be free of the stressors adults naturally face in their day to day life, which is essential because undue stress elevates the child’s stress hormones, which automatically activate the fight or flight brain (left-brain), eroding their capacity for experiencing creativity and connection.
As we learn as children, we are exposed to both practical knowledge and theoretical knowledge. Practical knowledge encompasses all forms of knowledge one can use to survive in the world; it is practical knowledge because it has direct application to getting a tangible result. Theoretical knowledge is theoretical because it is unproven.
In a field like mathematics or quantum physics, the use of theoretical knowledge is practical because it is used to make a living and solve problems that may be relevant to the functional challenges human beings face.
For example, a scientist may use theoretical knowledge to develop a theory for the creation of an advanced guidance system, like a GPS system. Until the theoretical knowledge proves tangible, it remains in the realm of theory and is unlikely to help you get from point A to point B. Once the GPS is functional, all relevant knowledge is now classified as functional; it is proven to work in the real world.
The most essential knowledge that one can gain in life is knowledge that directly results in improving one’s ability to create safety and security with regard to meeting their needs. If one acquires a base of theoretical knowledge that supersedes their use of practical knowledge, the risk of becoming a smart stupid person that can’t meet their needs becomes real!
If you read my last post (Brain~Mind Balance part 6), you already know how I feel about the challenges we face today because we have a world of experts with advanced degrees who’s health and well-being is a reflection of the state of the world at large! Yet, right now, you could fly to India and find Yogi’s living in the mountains without any rifles or hunting knives and they are, at large, happier and healthier with much less stress than the experts of the world. Additionally, they will be very likely to survive any potential upcoming environmental crisis while the Ph.D.’s of the world die because they can’t find water or food!
So, you must ask yourself, at the end of the day, who’s smarter? Who’s less confused?
The intellectual soul begins developing as soon as the child learns language, which comes hand-in-hand with exposure to a greater and greater number of ideas. If the ideas we acquire:
1. Segregate us from others and create an increased likelihood of war, they are not functional, not practical, not healthy. We all share the same resources and all have an innate desire to survive.
2. Are based on dogma and/or contrivances, as is the case of the bulk of religious ideology, the knowledge becomes less and less adaptable to the ever-changing environment of the planet and the people inhabiting it.
Contrived knowledge pawned off as fact (The world is only 4-6,000 years old; there are “chosen people”; there is only one begotten savior..) leads to dangerous clouding of one’s perceptual faculty and confusion. That confusion shows up, for example, in the support of war efforts contrived as safety and security threats that are actually State Terrorism and theft. Yet, all the while, the US has a Trillion dollar a year defense budget as our school and medical systems are failing miserably!and we consume resources at a planet-debilitating rate!and all the while, a huge percentage of the world- population is starving!
3. Are based largely on theory assumed by most teachers and their students to be fact, people run great risk of confusion when they are deemed “intelligent or successful”, yet can’t meet their needs.
For example, when agriculture students are taught that we can’t feed the world population without using chemicals and genetically modified foods “as fact”, when indeed that is not only a theory, it’s terribly incorrect and therefore, a dangerously debilitating theory to “believe in”.
I could give hundreds of similar examples here but time and space or an issue. The risk of such ideas becomes terribly real. Look at the news tonight!
Perception and Reality
In my next diagram above, you can see my little diagram that shows what ultimately creates our perception. At the bottom, you see an inverted triangle, which signifies our conditioned beliefs (which is largely what I was referring to with points 1-3 above). Our conditioned beliefs either do, or do not serve the needs of sustaining our internal environment (our bodies or biology). One’s internal environment must effectively integrate with our outer environment if we are to not only “survive”, but achieve well-being. The outer environment is “the world!” reflecting our “inner environment.”
Because our conditioned beliefs are either functional or dysfunctional with regard to meeting our survival needs – which can’t effectively be met if we are killing the metaphoric cow that feeds us (the planet) – they are either supportive of life, or antagonistic to life. When our ideas, which we perceive as truths don’t cultivate a sense of safety and security and integrity or well-being within us, we become split, as my diagram shows.
So, what does one do when they have dangerous programmed beliefs that are not only working for them, but the world at large? What do you do when world political leaders tout their Christian ethics (?!) and Christianity, like many other religions heavily frowns on participating in other religions or heeding the advice of other religious authorities, such as the Dali Lama?
It’s really quiet simple – you must understand that your pain is a gift. Your pain is a compass telling you that “YOU ARE GOING IN THE WRONG DIRECTION!”
The Conflicted Mind!
In my next diagram above, if you look at the top right, you will see patterns that are balanced, well constructed and harmonious.
When I use my spiritual vision to read an individual’s energy field, to the degree that their knowledge has led to choices and actions in relationship to persons, places and things, I see a variety of patterns and colors that look similar to what you see here. Their bodies and their mental-emotional state largely reflects the harmony of the energy and images I see in their aura or energy field.
When people are split or conflicted, their field looks very much like what you see in the person on their knees. Their bodies, emotions and thoughts all reflect each other. This is because the biology or “cells of your body” believe your ego-mind as thought it were the world of God!
Your thoughts are your prayers and you ALWAYS get what you pray for (think) with the greatest frequency and intensity! There is no exception to that rule and if you think there is, it’s only because you lack the spiritual vision or skill to see and know the truth!
Under the word “Disposition?”, you see an example of a skeletal-body that is mal-aligned and typical of any patient in pain. To the right of that image, you see a little cartoon of a person walking toward a ditch, but, when they get there, they don’t have the confidence in themselves to simply “make the jump” so they can arrive at their chosen destination – which in this case is health!
This beautifully signifies what I must put up with in my day-to-day work as a coach and therapist. Day in and day out I must deal with people that come to me for help, often facing a life threatening crisis, and when I give them advice they typically:
- Tell my why they can’t do it.
- Debate me constantly, quoting paper after paper and article after article that state things like, “organic foods are no more nutritious than commercially farmed foods”, or, “microwave ovens are not bad for your health”, or “chemo therapy and radiation therapy are safe and effective”, or “such and such a super-pill, juice, or gadget will cure your disease, increase the size of you penis and your sex drive and make all your pains go away”!and most of them have advanced university degrees!
- Tell me that they don’t have time to find organic food or exercise!
So, I sit patiently (for a while until I’ve had enough silliness) and when they are done selling me on what obviously hasn’t worked, I simply ask, “Well, from what you’ve said you’ve been doing this program for over a year now!if it was working, would you be here spending $500 an hour for my help?”
Live~evil!
In my next diagram, you can see a perfect example of the incorrect use and application of knowledge or ideas. The foods in packages are examples of the myriad of scientifically validated garbage. In general, these items are highly processed, dead and create chaos in the body-mind construct, which is commonly exemplified as mental-emotional instability.
On the right, you see wholefoods, which in their natural state (which includes conscious farming and maintaining a natural state of the soils and seas) produce soul-body-mind alignment or congruence in an individual’s being.
Religion and its ideas/teachings (which form the bulk of moral and ethical ideas passed onto children in churches and families worldwide!) are supposed to create unity among man, earth and the universe. The word “religion” stems from “religio”, which means union. Paradoxically, “Yoga” means “to yolk” or “unite” as well!
Religious teachings were intended to be life-affirmative. Religion represents systems of teaching people how to live in harmony with the earth and each other. In fact, one of the meanings for the word “Catholic”, oddly enough, is “holistic”. Meditate on that one! The Bible, Koran, and Jewish texts and teachings are loaded with so-called directives as to what is and isn’t a sin; to sin, we are taught, is “evil”.
The real truth as I see it is that anything that goes against life, which means to “live” is the converse; read L-I-V-E backwards and you get E-V-I-L, which simply means to live backwards, or AGAINST LIFE.
The Awareness-soul’s Emergence
The awareness-soul emerges when we come to realize the limitations of ideas. When we aren’t aware of our choices and actions, we continue to live against the truth of life until it hurts! Then, if we are intelligent, we begin looking for other answers to alleviate our pains, be they physical, emotional, mental or spiritual in origin.
OSHO said in one of his lectures, “The only sin is doing something twice when you know it didn’t work the first time!” There’s a lot of wisdom there.
When what we are doing isn’t working, even after several attempts, we are being given an opportunity to hold still, to introspect or meditate on our choices and actions. This signifies the gift of awareness offered by our pains. This is exactly what brings most of my patients and students to me for help. With practice, one learns that more can be gained from honest introspection, meditation and truth-seeking than can be gained by listening to experts that are no better off than you are! Soon, we come to realize that the mind that once served us has become cluttered, to a dangerous degree, with conflicting ideas.
Meditation is the practice of relaxing your mind to the point that there are no longer any ideas dancing on the screen of your mind. In that place, many have found that all questions can ultimately be answered, even if the answer is the intuition that you should look for another teacher, or religion!
As we grow into our awareness-soul, we naturally learn how to better use the powers of the intellectual-soul to serve us.
We learn that when assembling a new piece of furniture, or loading new software on our computers that we need our intellectual mind to follow the directions; that’s much faster than meditating on what’s in the directions than taking the advice of the manufacturer!
Yet, we also learn that there is no added value in constant mental regurgitation while shoveling snow, weeding the garden, or taking a walk. We learn to relax whenever possible, for in that state, we begin to see and feel the love and joy of the universe.
We come to realize that indeed, we’ve been given exactly the experiences that resonate with our dominant thoughts/prayers! We come to be wise enough to see that indeed, Mother Nature’s wisdom far surpasses our own! Look now at my image below and you can see a visual representation of this truth.
Live or evil, Your Choice!
Well, we’ve covered a lot of ground in the seven editions of this blog series.
I leave you today with this last image to meditate on.
In the next and final edition of this blog series, Brain~Mind Balance, I will share how the awareness-soul matures to become the Spirit-soul, which signifies the achievement of enlightenment.
I hope you’ve enjoyed the series thus far.
Love and chi,
Paul Chek
