How I love Caroline Myss. She's taught me so much about myself in relationship to the world and God. Thank God for Caroline Myss. She reminds me of the same energy I find in Ma Bhaskarananda at Ananda Ashram - the strong, tough, cut to the core kind of truth sayers, filled with love in their ability to get right down to the bottom of things:
Caroline Myss Israel Tour - Oct. 2008
This is not going to be the usual type of Thanksgiving newsletter in which I remind everyone to be thankful for their blessings, although I might get to that. Rather, I am in a more cosmic mood this morning, so I thought I would share some thoughts that are running through my mind as I attempt, in my own way, to make sense of a world undergoing epoch-size changes at light speed. I also, of course, hope that this Thanksgiving newsletter will be something you’ll be thankful to have read by the time you’re done with it.
No one is untouched by these changes, and from that perspective we are being drawn together in uncharted waters. None of us can possibly anticipate what each new day will bring us. Will the stock market go up tomorrow? Crash again? Will billions of dollars move from this faltering bank to that one? Will another entire country like Iceland actually go bankrupt? When have we ever witnessed such unbridled madness right in front of our eyes?
So, how do we interpret this? Where do we begin? What calculations do we use that we can even begin to rely upon? This situation has all the “experts” scrambling – and if I’m not mistaken, it was also experts who got us into this mess. Or was it? Perhaps the greater truth – the cosmic truth, as it were, is that this period of chaos was always scheduled to happen. Seems to me deep in our intuitive gut we’ve always been anticipating an epochal period of change. We just had no idea how that period of change would actually manifest and perhaps, in our naiveté, we thought that the dynamic of change would somehow occur “out there” somewhere, affecting the lives of others more than us, or be a controllable force that didn’t penetrate our 401K’s or our subprime mortgages or our personal incomes.
I’m reminded of how many times people say this comment after a disaster, “Who would ever think that such a thing could happen here?” We all live in the illusion that bad things happen “out there” and that our particular school of myths has the power to protect us. If I’m a good person, bad things won’t happen to me – but things do happen. The reason you study spiritual and mystical literature is so that you can learn to “reason like a mystic” and apply that skill precisely in times like this, so that when difficult crises arise your response is not, “What have I done wrong?” but, “Ah, so change is constant.” You haven’t done anything “wrong.” Instead, we are witnessing the truths in motion that we have studied for years. To wit, Buddha’s teaching: All is illusion. What greater proof can we have that all is illusion than to see fortresses of finance disappear in front of our eyes that just last week, or last month, we would have “bet the ranch” were as safe as, well, Fort Knox? Who was right? Fort Knox or Buddha? In the end, it is the great spiritual teachings that always, always, always remain steady, and prove to be truth.
So let’s “reason like a mystic” as we examine the chaos in the world around us. Instead of looking through the lens of ordinary reason and thought, let us look through the lens of mystical law, those laws which govern the collective field of energy and the collective soul of humanity. This is where you need to cast your attention to “see clearly,” not on the piles of mess on the earth. Once a system has collapsed or is screaming for help, its energies are already exhausted. The first step in learning to reason like a mystic is to understand what “has” to happen, because of the level of psychic free radicals in the collective consciousness. What psychic systems are out of balance that need to come into balance? Nothing that a person can do in the physical world can possibly redirect what “has” to happen in the energetic domain if that process has already begun. That is, once a woman has begun to give birth, it is too late to introduce birth control to prevent her from getting pregnant. The time to have an influence on the formation of events is prior to pregnancy, prior to the time when certain types of changes or events become inevitable because of the energy that humanity has generated.
What, then, has to happen within our world?
We are living at a great turning point in history. We are witnessing the shifting of all the power structures of the great nations and systems of this planet as they tumble out of control while struggling to remain in control. The great threads holding the illusion of control together are currency and oil. It’s quite astounding to observe this dynamic that has silently maneuvered behind the scenes for years suddenly become exposed before our eyes because of the failings of greed, in effect. What we are witnessing is the ceiling on greed. Apparently there is an end point, at least to how the current system has structured the market.
>From a completely different perspective, we are witnessing the closure of the era of separation of powers and domination by force and inequality of cultures. For those of us who have aligned ourselves even slightly to the perspective of holism as a personal code of health, that code assumes that each organ in the body, while remaining an individual organ, is no longer sovereign. It is, insread, subject to a grander holistic body politic whereby the whole must be served in order for the whole body to thrive. Cosmic law, or mystical law, teaches that “what is in one is in the whole.” This means that every person who has absorbed that mystical law as a health code has also absorbed that cosmic law as a prelude to the transformation of the global body politic. It can’t be otherwise because, “What is in ONE is indeed in the whole.” Therefore, through every action you as an individual have taken to further your personal health as a “whole being” you have also inadvertently supported the transformation of the global village into a whole body politic at the energy level. To put this in yet a more mystical context, if you thought of yourself as a “living prayer,” which in essence you are, then all your intentions and thoughts to become a whole and healthy person are consumed by the collective soul as well as your individual soul. These intentions, or units of grace, are the fuel that, in turn, converts into physical events and actions in the greater arena of life.
Here’s a pause for thought: I remember studying the texts of the mystical apparitions from Fatima and Lourdes and other well known sightings of the Madonna. They intrigue me for many reasons, not the least being the pattern behind those apparitions. Consistent with her messages to the visionaries was always the urgent plea to tell people to pray. The apparitions of the Fatima Madonna, which occurred in 1917, included the prediction of yet another world war that would eclipse World War I in size and horror, which, of course, World War II did. That early exposure to “messages from above,” so to speak, set me on a path of wondering for years, if “heaven” already anticipated such horror, why didn’t heaven just stop it? What’s with telling us to pray? Why not just stop all those evil Nazis and Hitler and Stalin? How could a good and just and loving heaven and God permit such nightmarish suffering? To say that I struggled with this question as a child and young adult is a masterpiece of understatement. The study of the Holocaust consumed me from the age of thirteen as did the study of war, which still consumes me, always looking for the root of that point of evil.
But finally, in my own way, I understood a small piece of this mystical dictate about the power of prayer. That power represents the counter-power to psychic free radicals that also must find an avenue of physical expression in the form of events in the physical world. Psychic free radicals are generated by the negative thoughts, words, and deeds of humanity, and these gather in the collective unconscious, generating pools of energy that look for vessels of expression. Wars, turbulence, terrorism, violence, greed, and all the shadow characteristics of humanity thrive off of psychic free radicals. That is simply the law of manifestation expressed at the level of the collective unconscious, and we are the ones in charge of how well we learn to work with these laws. The law of manifestation is not just for creating personal wealth, as it has been introduced in popular culture. This is a major cosmic force that functions on multiple levels, including the collective, creating events that affect the collective and reflect the quality of consciousness as a whole. We are either subject to them or we work within them, which is the essence of mystical reasoning. This is what Buddha realized along with Jesus and all great spiritual masters. The turning of the tides is done from above and from within. It is you who must learn to work with the power of your interior forces, to scaffold your inner consciousness and build a soul with stamina, so that when chaos abounds around you, you can see through it rather than be consumed by it.
We can look at this time as a nightmare of chaos or we can look at this time as that which we have prepared ourselves for during these past many years, working on our health and on becoming more conscious individuals. If this isn’t the time to put all that you’ve learned about being a conscious person into action, then when would be that time? Ask yourself, “Why have I worked so hard on myself?” Was it just to process the wounds from your childhood? Well, if it was, be done with that and get on with the business of thinking, living, acting, and perceiving the world around you through the lens of a mystic. This is the time to apply all the laws of the cosmos to every one of your challenges, to approach every problem through mystical reasoning and not that of ordinary reasoning, which will draw you backwards and into your history. Looking backwards at what you used to do or how you used to do something will not work anymore.
So many people have contacted me to discuss what they should do next, because their lives are melting down around them. And my counsel to them is yet another mystical law, which is, “Learn to think in paradox.” That is, paradox is one of the fundamental expressions of the Divine. What looks like an ending is really a beginning; what looks safe is really your fear talking; what looks riskiest is really the way to go. Paradox is a mystical force and when it is present in your life, rest assured that the Divine is equally present in the event.
To me, this is a time of great hope because when chaos abounds, so does opportunity. It can look as if the field of opportunity is bleak, but that is simply not true. As I teach my students, whether you are healing an illness or maneuvering through change, you must keep your attention in the present in order to “perceive” intuitive instructions. These will rarely speak of what you have already done. Rather you have to be prepared to do what you have not done before, as your intuition will always direct you to draw on new inner resources as opposed to relying on the old and familiar.
The power of grace is yet another mystical resource, and not grace in general, but specific grace. In my upcoming book, I elaborate extensively on how to call upon your intimate graces. You have to learn how to use each grace, to become familiar with its power and presence. The grace of Wisdom is especially useful in times of darkness, because this grace gives you the capacity to discern truth in the midst of chaos, however that chaos manifests in your life. The presence of grace is realized when your aptitude for discernment or wisdom becomes heightened, serving you as a candle in the night. Turn to Wisdom writings, either the sacred scriptures of the world or the writings of all the great mystics, as a way of putting their vocabulary in your head and reminding yourself of the value of wise truth.
Wisdom teaches us, for example, that if all we thought was stable evaporated so easily, it can all be replaced just as quickly. Chaos is as much an illusion as stability. What is not an illusion is truth. Truth is the one constant. Look at whatever is happening in your life and remind yourself that if it is chaotic, there is something old that must be surrendered. Look to your interior and listen for guidance. Remind yourself that you are alive at this time because you are meant to maneuver through these changes. Move forward, ever forward. And think like a mystic!
I invite all of you to come study with me, come learn to reason as a mystic in this world. My upcoming book, BEYOND REASON: Healing Through Mystical Wisdom and Simple Truths, explores mystical reasoning in detail, breaking the boundaries of ordinary thought. The time could not be more right for this information as the changes in the world have made the need to know how to use mystical reasoning a matter of practical survival. I consider the election of Barack Obama a global mystical event, quite frankly, a turning of the tide for humanity and certainly for America. This nation was on a respirator and going down fast after almost eight years of being fed the poison of the Bush administration. Finally in a great voice, the majority screamed, “Enough,” and we broke through the dark hold of the Bush administration, redirecting this nation from hopelessness to hope. Everyone feels it everywhere around the world. No one has ever seen such a response to a presidential election because never before has America sunk to such darkness. Never before has the world witnessed such a malevolent administration in charge of this great nation as the Bush-Cheney team. America was turned into something it was never meant to be – an aggressive, attacking nation. And we disintegrated as a result. But then we were offered hope and we grabbed on to the grace with all our might. We broke through that darkness, and with the force of hope we will build this nation anew. And we will. And we will be all the wiser for having taken this detour during these past eight years, a detour that will forever remind us that we can lose our freedom, we can be led by fools, we are responsible for the quality of our leadership and the actions of our Senate and Congress. We must never again neglect our end of what it means to be a citizen of the United States of America or a conscious global citizen.
Our time has come. We are no longer “waiting” for the era of consciousness to begin. We are that era. We must now put to use all that we have prepared ourselves to be and to do through these years. The world is now the new monastery in the most cosmic meaning of that term and you are a mystic out of the monastery, who has the potential to be a force of great change in your personal life, for your family, your friends, and your community. We are indeed all in this together – and thank God for that.
Happy Thanksgiving, everyone.
Caroline
www.myss.com
