The Warrior on Earth
Part I - The body
Since opening the store and having more direct one-on-one contact with people on a variety of spiritual paths, the one issue that comes up repeatedly is that of healing - both on a physical and a spiritual level. What has become very apparent to me is that there may be a lot of misconceptions about not only who we are, but what we are.
The "problem" with our physical bodies is that they are made of organic matter which has a nasty tendency to deteriorate just as part of its nature. Just what is. So it's important to acknowledge that being on a spiritual path does not make us icons of perfect health, nor does it make us impervious to disease. With a warrior's awareness, we begin to live our lives in a more impeccable manner, but as I was saying to a dear friend the other night, even the most impeccable warrior is still a being who is going to die. At the level I'm speaking here, what that translates to is that even as our energy body grows stronger and more Whole, our physical bodies are involved in the long and difficult process of returning to the earth. That's the irony of being a warrior. :\ But it's also the beauty of it in that it enables the warrior with awareness to shift her assemblage point at the moment of death from the failing physical body and into the perfected energy body (or double).
Many times, I'm also asked by folks if what they have done in their lives is responsible for their current state of health. As I have interpreted this by people who have come into my store, they are addressing this at the level of "karma", and all I can tell them is "No, absolutely not!" Stepping on a bug when you were 10 or even cheating on your mate doesn't result in bad ankles or cancer of the cervix. Sure, how we feel about our actions may create stress-related illnesses (i.e., we can manifest our reality by how we think/feel about ourselves), but once a warrior can get beyond attachments to the actions of his past, whatever we have done in the past no longer has any power over us. Ergo, the power of recapitulation. And beyond even that, the power that comes with being a teflon warrior.
Sure, there's a fine line here, but in the big picture, I feel it's important for warriors to understand that part of being human also means being "fragile" in the sense that our physical bodies are temporal, whereas our energy body (the double) is eternal.
An analogy I've used in my workshops is that we are VERY MUCH like chicks inside an egg. We start out as a mass of goo, and slowly the tiny chick forms a body, feathers, beak, feet, and the like, until one day the shell cracks and the chick emerges from one body (the shell) into the next (its newly grown chick-body). In many ways, this is how I see the warrior's relationship with her double. Our human lives are the egg in which we gestate and grow, and when the egg finally cracks, we emerge into the "new" body we have been creating - the energy body of the double. It's all part of a cycle of our evolution - and whether we like it or not, it would certainly appear that we cannot remain in our temporal mortal shells as eternal beings. (Caveat: I would STILL welcome an opportunity to meet The Tenant... but that's another story altogether).
Even the most impeccable warrior still lives in an organic human body which deteriorates around him - and that's the ironic comedy-tragedy of Life.
Part 2 - Relating to phantoms, including our own phantom-self
As most of you know, my mother recently passed away. And this brings me to part two of this admittedly rambling missive. In the course of working with folks on the path, another thing that constantly comes up is the role of guilt and grief in our day to day lives - not just grief for those who have died, but the guilt we may be (expected to) feel as a result of our relationships with folks still on this side of the dirt.
Even though I was always very independent as a child and never really "needed" my mother on an emotional level, there came a time in my adult years when I would have enjoyed getting to know her, but I lived 3000 miles away, and we were never really on the same wavelength anyway. I would send her copies of my books and to my knowledge she never read them. At first, that probably hurt me on some level, but as I progressed on my own path, I came to understand that she was probably not capable of understanding what I was writing about, and that she was simply proud of me for being a writer. That had to be enough for me, because it was all she COULD give. So I just kept sending her the books, and she kept piling them up on a shelf, where they are still gathering dust in her empty home in Florida.
As I was going through the house when we visited her in August, I had to look at that pile of books and smile, for all the guilt or grief I might once have experienced was not there. I had done my best and, in hindsight, I realize she did her best, too - even if neither of us did it in the manner the other might have wanted or expected. If I had been emotionally invested in her response, I would have been forever disappointed. I knew as I looked at that pile of books... simply... It was enough that it was what it was. It was enough, for we had both done our best.
At some point several years ago, I came to understand that unconditional love is a matter of loving someone for who THEY are, and not for who we might WANT them to be. And often it is a matter of loving them IN SPITE of who they are. *gotta laugh* So when people come into the store and sit down with me for a consultation, one of the big issues often has to do with interpersonal relationships and how those relationships are causing all sorts of stress, pain and even emotional/spiritual illness which may then start to manifest in the body. Often, the best advice I can give is that we need to understand that our troublesome family members are simply who they are, and that NONE of that is our fault, and even better, none of it is our "responsibility". For our own well-being, we really need to know that this is just "what is".
What it all comes down to is letting go of attachments to our idea about something that usually has nothing to do with the reality of the thing itself. We might want our mother or our mate or our child to be a certain way, but we cannot shove them into that role/mold without serious consequences to them and to ourselves. Maybe that sucks if one's child is a drug addict or one's mate is cheating on her or one's father is a controlling prick, but the bottom line is a warrior's Intent to move toward freedom - even if that movement involves leaving all of this behind in the dark and dusty closet of illusions.
It is when warriors hold onto attachments to the past that the past can actually "control" their lives - ergo the importance of learning to release attachments before they start to form, and to ruthlessly reject those that may already exist. Sure, when we're dealing with people we're "supposta" love, this can become more difficult, but the eagle doesn't cut us any slack on anything just because so-and-so was my father and I have to love him. It's a program and it's a dangerous one. To give someone control over our lives (often even from beyond the grave) just because they were/are someone whom the program tells us we must love is to turn over our lives to the hands of phantoms and the power of our social programming.
If you father was a dick, that's just who he was. Let it go. Love him unconditionally if you are able, but remember that loving someone unconditionally does not mean inviting them over for tea and crumpets. There's a lot to be said for keeping one's distance. If your sister is telling you that you must come to Thanksgiving dinner and sit down with your father who was a dick, then it's time to seriously examine the programming mechanism of guilt that may cause you to actually consider doing it.
Not even the finest warrior can "fix" what is wrong with other people, and to even attempt to do so would be the height of self-importance. We can only live our own lives to their fullest, and sometimes that is going to involve letting to of our idea about who someone should be, and either accept them for who they are, or release them from your life if they are dragging you down. You wouldn't tolerate a heroine addict living in your basement, stealing everything in the house to pay for his next fix, so why would you tolerate an energy vampire living in your heart, draining you of every good feeling even when they aren't physically present, or may have been dead for years. Let. It. Go.
What is acceptance? It only means that you SEE that the phantoms in your life cannot be anything other than what they ARE. You don't have to spend time with them. Eventually, you will start to see that their "control" over your life is an illusion. It is a power you have given them, and it is a power you can take away just with a thought - realizing that you don't "owe" it to them to be who they WANT you to be, and they doesn't "owe" it to you to be who you want them to be.
In the course of living, we encounter people we love and people we don't particularly like at all. The ironic thing is when some of the people we DON'T like turn out to be the people we are TOLD by society that we are "supposta" love - such as our parents, our children, or members of our "family". That's when a warrior really comes face to face with the consensual reality's programming mechanism. When we don't particularly love our parents, for example, we may go through a large part of our lives harboring guilt - until we finally get it through our head that "love" isn't based on blood and family is often who we choose instead of whatever clan we were born into quite by accident.
Live fully. Breathe deeply. Love unconditionally.
And let the rest go.
All material in this blog (essays, rants, images, poetry, et al) is copyright © by Della Van Hise, and may not be reprinted elsewhere without the prior written permission of the author. Quantum ShamanTM is a trademark of QuantumShaman.ComTM and reserves all rights to this material. This includes all print and electronic media, including other blogs, other websites, and so on. Thanks for respecting copyrights.