Inner Rhythms

Sacred Body Messages: The Yin & Yang Inside

March 29th, 2012

Yin and Yang are often identified as the masculine and feminine qualities represented in sacred symbolism, within our physical bodies as well as the emotional and psycho-spiritual conditions deeper inside of us.

To the Taoists, Yin and Yang are evident in the flow of energy moving through the meridians and as the elements of water and fire. The Hindus and similar yogic-based philosophies may see this as prana and apana, the union of Shakti and Shiva or the Ida and Pingala nadis.

Celtic and other indigenous people find Yin and Yang represented in the earthly and heavenly elements of water and fire, earth and air, as well as in the energies of moon and sun.

Our physical bodies are holograms for Yin and Yang, the mythos of ancient cultures and divine symbolism. In these contexts we can see ourselves as reflections of heaven and earth, a balance of both integrated within us. Our brains, our autonomic nervous systems, arteries, veins and blood flow, the endocrine system, and even our behaviors are filled with this energy.

In our world, we say that Yin and Yang is a Universal Principle. Maybe we would better express it as an Earthly Principle–part of a series of earthly expressions that exist under or inside a principle of Oneness. When Yin and Yang are truly integrated, our human version of oneness can be a gateway to higher dimensions where duality probably doesn’t exist.

In fact, it can also be expressed by the levels of consciousness and our chakra system–the 8th chakra above our head represents the gateway. For us humans, it’s important to actually experience the principles, singularly and in concert with one another. It helps us to physically feel both distinction and unity.

Try this simple integration exercise using one of the most profound yet simple, divine energies available to our bodies. Use it for self-reflection, expression and evolution: the BREATH!

Sit quietly; breathing naturally, your feet are on the floor. Visualize your breath moving up and down your spine, as if it is a river contained within your body. Feel the breath pooling at the top of your head and then allow it to run down to your pelvic floor and tailbone; let it pool there too.

Breathe and feel all the spaces along your spine in between.

Allow your breath to flow freely inside and immediately around your spinal column. It surrounds the bones, the muscles, especially the nerves and fluids inside the container of your vertebrae. Breathe in this way for at least 5 minutes, noticing how you feel, what you see or sense. What do you discover about your breath, your thoughts, your physical sensations and emotions?

Now, imagine the breath moving up the spinal river into the center of your head and then branching off down two streams that run alongside the spinal river on right and left sides. Inhale upwards through the spinal river, all the way to the top of your head again. Exhale downward through the two streams to the pelvic floor and tail area.

Perform this gently, quietly, repeating the sequence for another 5 minutes. Notice how your body feels, notice what you see or sense. What do you discover about your breath, your body, your thoughts and emotions?

Repeat this whole exercise each day for a week. Do not purposely change anything inside you—not your breath, nor your rhythms; not what you see. In other words, don’t try to fix what you observe. Just keep breathing. If something naturally or spontaneously shifts inside you on any level: physical, emotional-mental, energetic, visual or spiritual, allow this to take place. There is a big difference between fixing and allowing.

What do you notice as you progress through the week? You might want to make some notes in a journal about your discoveries.

Qualities of Yin & Yang:

Feminine-Masculine

Right Brain-Left Brain

Eros-Logos

Shakti-Shiva

Ida-Pingala

Moon-Sun

Receptive -Active

Cool-Warm

Apana-Prana

Expiration-Inspiration

Parasympathetic-Sympathetic

Afference-Efference

As Above, So Below

As Within-So Without

Individuation

Yin-Yang Symbol

Six-Pointed Star Symbol

Tree of Life Symbolism

Please join us in exploring the body as a sacred hologram each week with self-reflection, expression and practice. Just wave your magic mouse over the subscribe button up there on the right to sign-up!

Madness

March 15th, 2012

Do you have any friends–past or present–who are crazy?

Are there any schizophrenic, psychotic or depressed people around you?

Has anyone you know experienced a fugue state or a dramatic split during their lifetime?

How about anyone with that new boutique mental illness called bi-polar disorder? Have you ever been anxious, anxiety-ridden or had a panic attack?

Have you ever rubbed elbows with, or are you acquainted with any sociopaths or psychopaths?

Have you ever spent time with anyone who has what is conveniently diagnosed as dementia, senility or Alzheimer’s disease?

And by the way, have you ever asked yourself these questions?

If so, have you explored the possibility that all humans are easily capable of going into one of these states, or that many are currently sitting on the precipice looking down into the abyss of madness? Have you ever given any thought to looking over that edge yourself?

What about the truly creative types who are dangling one foot in the air, holding an almost constant and compulsive state of curiosity and willingness to jump? Did you see the movies “Pollack,” & “Surviving Picasso?” Have you read any of Sylvia Plath’s books, especially “The Bell Jar?” Do you know the story “The Prince of Tides?”

How about this: have you ever been in a state of love, lust, even enthusiastic ‘like’ or ecstatic grace with God…another person?

A warrior might interpret many of these things intensely, yet if that is daunting, you could take a gentler approach, looking at madness through John Keats’ eyes or some of the old balladeers and poets like Yeats, Wilde, Lord Tennyson and William Blake. Some of them spoke softly then, yet touch us now no less deeply, viscerally and melodramatically.

Stay up for a couple days without sleep; sail the ocean without sight of land for even a day; walk alone in the forest for a few hours; make your way through thick, soundless fog for a few minutes. Can you feel the madness creeping in?

Maybe it’s just a grander connection to earth and sky that we feel in those moments, a loss of direction and increased confusion, a temporary separation from self as we know it to be, and a greater sensation of the divine.

Can you feel it?

And can you simultaneously know the mini-mad-moments in life? How do you move through them? Do you judge yourself, loathe yourself or pressure yourself to return to some state of self-designed sanity? Are you afraid of them, looking only for comfort in your divinity?

Wouldn’t it be wonder-filled to be still and breathe in these moments, or would you rather run away from yourself and anyone else who appears in this way, anyone who isn’t ‘normal?’ Can you look yourself or someone else in the eye while in such a vulnerable state of self-expression; can you hold space for it all to just move naturally while altered in any of these ways? Can you be yourself in the midst of an episode of madness, no matter who’s it is, and how far the insanity goes?

Can you imagine a moment of freedom? Can you imagine a lifetime of freedom, or does that much freedom make you feel a little bit mad?

One of my former teachers created a lecture series called, “You May Be Psychic, Not Crazy.” It was how he started Berkeley Psychic Institute, decades ago. He also wrote a creed about Spiritual Freedom, and was the first to roll out the truth in a way that resonated with my sensibilities, my interpretations.

Paulo Cohelo speaks to madness as a state of warrior-ship. He speaks truth to me too.

“A Warrior of Light carefully studies the position that he intends to conquer.

However difficult the objective, there is always a way of overcoming obstacles. He seeks out alternative paths, he sharpens his sword, he tries to fill his heart with the necessary determination to face the challenge.

But as he advances, the Warrior realizes that there are difficulties he had not reckoned with.

If he waits for the ideal moment, he will never set off. The Warrior requires a touch of madness to take the next step.

The Warrior uses that touch of madness. For–in both love and war–it is impossible to foresee everything.” An excerpt from Paulo Cohelo’s “Warrior of the Light, A Manual.”

Purchase Paulo Cohelo’s book.

A Light Warriors Creed

March 3rd, 2012

“Life is a storm.

Bask in the sunlight one moment, be shattered on the rocks the next.

What makes you a warrior is what you do when that storm comes.

You must look into the storm and shout as you did when you were born…

‘Do your worst…for I will do mine.’

Then the fates will know you as we know you…as one who came to stand for integrity.”

*This is a paraphrased version of a birthday speech from “The Count of Monte Cristo.”

Light Warriors

March 2nd, 2012

I seem to be a sword wielder.

Those who see life differently than I, might say it’s a bat.

No matter to me, I am who I am. I see it as a sword and I use it regularly, especially when I need to move out of an outworn paradigm or escape from the clutches of an addictive habit.

Everyone is batting, slicing and poking lately, not just me.

Each one of us is integrating, re-integrating, reorganizing, and even rewriting our stories. We are turning over apple carts right and left, leaving our former villagers agape in our wakes.

Sometimes this is not only upsetting, it’s incredibly painful. Sometimes we feel confused, sometimes certain, and in others there’s a lot of ease. No matter how we interpret recent big and small events, time is quickly moving and we are quickening whether we want to or not. That in itself feels sort of strangely easy lately because we simply don’t have the time to worry, feel guilty or get stuck anyplace too long!

I like this quickening…even though it often hurts me and anyone else in the surrounding or nearby energy fields. I just use my sword–or bat depending on how you might see it, to cut through my own tendency for sluggishness, guilt, grief, or even too much sympathy.

Even if you aren’t a sword fighter or batter, you might like this.

There’s a story about a woman who, on her last legs to enlightenment, crosses paths with a bent and tired old man carrying a bundle of wood on his back. She watches as the man loses his balance, all the wood falling to ground. It’s her choice, her final test, whether to stay and help him pick up the wood or to walk on.

What would you do?

One day a couple weeks ago, I must have misplaced my stinger because I found myself under a pile of rotten, moldy and crumbling sticks. An old man was laughing and skipping down the lane not too far away.

Sitting in what felt like a sodden mire of great trepidation, I called an old buddy of mine. Instead of pulling the decaying wood off of me, this friend sent along an article about spiritual warrior-ship.

It was a reminder. Here’s the link: The Unknown Lightworker–The Lightwarrior

Reading this blog helped not only to allay the sticky feelings that could have easily turned to guilt, it helped me to shift my way point…it got me up and through one of those more confusing moments recently when I might have stopped again to help an old man.

Integrity

March 1st, 2012

I’ve been reflecting for a long time on what it means to be a conscious, conscientious person, someone inside that often overused idea of ‘our spiritual journey toward enlightenment.’

What does it mean to be someone with integrity, and how do we define our placement along the way in terms of ‘all things being equal?’

One day while watching the second martial arts movie about Bruce Lee’s master teacher, ‘Ip Man2,’ I heard my answer.

Ip Man said at the end, “No man’s integrity is more valuable than another’s.”

Something really clicked in me and this was my mantra for several weeks. One day while reflecting on the message of Ip Man’s words, I saw an image of two circle patterns. Each circle had an outer ring with a fairly large center point in the middle. The first and larger circle appeared to be a Universal metaphor for integrity and had a lot of dots along the outer ring.

The second, smaller circle symbolized the individual circles in which we humans live and operate. It was an enlarged version of the dots around the Universal circle ring.

In that moment I felt truly clear about this idea of who is where on the way. We are only as enlightened as we are whole, and wholeness, or integration, is the same for everyone. No one person is better than another or further along the path than someone else when integrity is at the center.

All other points are just varying degrees of integration–stages along the way.

Each one of us is walking inward toward center; inward to our own center and inward to the center of the Universal principle of integrity. A balance of yin and yang inside of us, yin and yang together, inside a circle of oneness.