The Inspiration for a New Vision of Healing - Healing for the 21st Century

For 1000s of years, the world’s various esoteric traditions have spoken with one voice as to what the purpose of life is. And the message that these traditions have offered us (i.e. the "perennial philosophy") is that the purpose of all life experience is to guide creation towards self-realization, i.e. the awakening of the transcendent, bliss-consciousness that is the source of our being and our true nature and identity.

And although the particulars differ from one culture to another, these spiritual traditions have also been united in their understanding that the longing for spiritual healing (i.e. direct union with that transcendent, bliss-consciousness) is the ultimate motivation for all our actions and that meditation (i.e. focused attention upon that transcendent consciousness) is the most direct path to self-realization.

But despite the fact that the wisdom of these traditions has been potentially available for millennia, it remains, even today, largely unknown as human beings continue to search elsewhere for answers to the meaning of life.

The truth is that for most of history, the wisdom of the perennial philosophy has only been known to a select few. Often, it has been intentionally obfuscated or completely hidden and (arguably) with good reason. The collective human consciousness was and, in many ways, still is relatively undeveloped. We are a young species. Our identification with ego (i.e. the belief that we exist as separate, individual beings) limits our capacity to embrace or even understand a clear and direct exposition of this wisdom. To this day, we see this sobering truth reflected in the many stories of the prophets, saints and soothsayers of ages past and present who have been slain, exiled or maligned for speaking a truth that their community was not ready to hear.

The sum and substance of this human evolutionary history is that the deeper understanding of the purpose of life (and of spiritual healing as a path to the fulfillment of that purpose) has been either lost, distorted or forgotten altogether. And as such, human affairs have largely (and sadly) been starved of the fruits of self-realization.

The heartening promise of our spiritual heritage is that in every moment of our lives, we are meant to seek the fulfillment of our deepest longings through the transcendent joy of spiritual healing - not just as an occasional indulgence but as an ever-present sacred duty. Our happiness is not just intended - it is who we are. But, in our ignorance, we settle for seeking nothing more than the mere avoidance of pain or the pursuit of momentary pleasures to soothe our egoic desires because we don't know or are too afraid to believe there is anything more. 

Even our systems of medicine and healing, in their efforts to advance the common good, can unwittingly betray this bias for prioritizing our egoic desires over our spiritual longings. By seeking the removal of illness and disease as the principal measure of success in healing, they become overly invested in circumventing life's inescapable dualities. As such, they miss the opportunity to help us embrace and transcend those dualities by guiding us in the development of the awakened consciousness that would reveal to us that pain and disease are meaningful (and necessary) experiences in and of themselves .

When we look to the present age, we see that with the ever-increasing secularization and materialization of human societies - together with our identification with ego and our almost exclusive devotion to egoic pursuits - has actually deepened and our attention has continued to move away from the knowledge of our true spiritual nature.

The poignant irony of our modern times is that In the past 100 years, we have seen an amazing proliferation in both the scope and the types of healing available to us. And with the advent of computer technology, we now have an historically unparalleled ability to access resources and information about those systems of healing and medicine -- we no longer live in an age in which knowledge of the wisdom of our esoteric traditions can be completely obfuscated or confined to a select few.

Yet, even now, most of our current systems of healing (from “allopathic” systems of medicine to more “holistic” alternative approaches) still fall short of the promise of true spiritual healing because they ignore or dismiss the wisdom of the perennial philosophy and continue to seek either the elimination of disease or the evocation of pleasurable “spiritual” experiences as their primary (and sometimes only) goal. And the same computer technology that makes information about that wisdom more accessible than ever has also undermined the promise of that accessibility by becoming the very tool with which we can, and often do, keep ourselves and our attention constantly entertained and distracted with all sorts of worldly matters.

This continued attachment to the satisfaction of egoic desires, at the expense of the development of our awakened consciousness, is quite understandable. As previously mentioned, human consciousness is still relatively undeveloped, and as such, we are all (for the most part) still very much identified with our egos. And so the elimination of pain and disease (i.e. the denial of life's duality) has an immediate appeal that is undeniable because from the perspective of ego that is all we have. 

But the perennial philosophy tells us that that is not the truth -- that there is more to our existence than the futile quest to subvert life's dualities by annihilating pain, disease and death and attaching ourselves to pleasure, health and perpetual life. And since that quest is not the purpose of our lives, it ultimately cannot and will not quench our essential desire for true transcendence. And so it will always and inevitably leaves us wanting.

Against this historical backdrop, I was inspired to begin working on the Healing for the 21st Century workshop because I believe we are in need of a new vision for healing not to replace or supplant the old and existing paradigms but rather to fulfill their promise. And I believe that humanity is ready for this new kind of healing. A healing that is rooted in the wisdom of our ancient esoteric traditions and that lifts us high above life’s duality of pain and pleasure by beckoning us to reach for the highest expression of what humanity we can be.

In the Healing for the 21st Century workshop, we will look at our existing paradigms for healing from the perspective of consciousness to understand not just their gifts but also their limitations. Then, we will explore a vision for what healing (as spiritual healing) can be that is radically different from many of our current systems of healing. A vision centered not in the elimination of suffering but in the development of a consciousness that allows us to embrace that suffering and transcend it as the only true and lasting source of happiness. A vision that seeks to bring healing back to its original and intended purpose as a path to self-realization and the awakening of our true identity as Absolute bliss-consciousness-being.

For more information about the Healing for the 21st Century workshop, click here.

The Reality Distortion Field

Two very different stories in today's New York Times really struck me in terms of how plainly they reveal our human willingness to bend reality to make it conform to our own personal agenda for how we think “reality” should be.

The first article was a story about a woman who in 2004 pled guilty in the death of her then boyfriend. The boyfriend was killed in an automobile accident while she was driving. Her conviction has now been overturned in the aftermath of a NY Times article from May of this year that reported that General Motors considered the death to have been caused by the now widely-reported faulty ignition switch problem in GM cars.

What struck me about this article was the following reference to how the district attorney and the investigating police trooper were more invested in rationalizing away their own ignorance than in understanding what really happened:

That district attorney… and the police trooper who investigated Ms. Anderson’s accident, whose report strongly suggested that Ms. Anderson’s driving had been influenced by intoxication, had both said that if the ignition-switch defect had been publicly known at the time of the crash, certain details of the accident—like the seemingly inexplicable lack of skid marks or evasive action—would have been seen differently.

It appears that the “intoxication” referred to was, as per the toxicology report, nothing more than trace amounts of Xanax. Nonetheless, in the absence of any other incriminating evidence—and in the face of what I presume was a strong desire to wrap up the case and exact some form of justice—that “intoxication” was all that was needed to justify a rationalized interpretation that ultimately led to a woman being charged, tried and convicted of a horrible crime with which she actually had nothing to do. 

The other article, entitled Calling out Bill Cosby’s Media Enablers, Including Myself, was a mea culpa about the media’s complicity (including that of the article’s author) in overlooking what was apparently widely known in certain media circles regarding Bill Cosby's alleged pattern of victimizing women throughout his career.

Answering his own question about why it took so long for the media to report on Mr. Cosby’s alleged sexist behavior, the author hits the nail on the head:

What took so long is that those in the know kept it mostly to themselves. No one wanted to disturb the Natural Order of Things, which was that Mr. Cosby was beloved; that he was as generous and paternal as his public image; and that his approach to life and work represented a bracing corrective to the course, self-defeating urban black ethos. [Emphasis added.]

Only the first of those things was actually true.

When it comes to distorting reality, it is our ego that is always at the helm. And ego abhors being wrong almost as much as it abhors being in the unknown. And in this sense, to some extent, we all create and live in our own version of a reality distortion field. We don’t just seek comfort in the face of pain, safety in the face of anxiety and certainty in the face of the inexplicable. We will them to exist even if it means distorting the truth… even if it means that someone else might be hurt.

But at the end of the day, creating our own reality distortion field does not change reality, only our perception of it. The “Natural Order of Things” is that the reality we live in is ultimately born of mystery and firmly rooted in the unknown. And the more we surrender to that perennial truth, the easier life becomes not just for each of us personally but for all of us collectively.

The Newly Refreshed Sophianic Healing Website

I am very happy to announce that the Sophianic Healing website has received a refresh!

It is hard for me to believe that it has already been a little over seven years since I first launched the Sophianic Healing website. Over time, I have made small changes here and there to the website as needed to reflect changing circumstances. But in truth the bulk of the website, and in particular its design, had remained substantially the same. And it had become very clear to me that the visual and graphic aspects of the webstie were overdue for a refresh.

When I began tackling this refresh project, I had expected that I would also be making substantial changes to the content of the website given how much my work has changed over the years. But I was pleasantly surprised to find that even after all these years, and the continual evolution of my understanding and approach to the healing work, the majority of the content still accurately reflected the essence of my work. So while I have in fact updated and revised some of the content, and in some places added additional content, the bulk of what is there will be familiar to those of you who have previously visited the website.

Some of the changes that I have made to the content include revisions to the "About Sophianic Healing" sections of the website to reflect changes in my work as well as additional language that helps clarify the description of the Sophianic Healing process. I have also added a new section entitled The Sophianic Healing Session that offers a detailed description of a typical healing session.

In contrast, none of the visual elements of the old website remain. All of the graphics and fonts have been updated to a more modern and fresh look. In addition to a refresh of all of the colors, the website now sports a simple but beautiful full-screen layout with flatter graphics and more modern fonts. And of course, I have also updated the pictures of yours truly, which now show me sporting a little more of a variety of things -- more facial hair, more gray hair and a few more wrinkles.

Finally, The Sophianic Healing Blog has also been updated with a whole new look. And unlike before where links to the Blog would redirect you to another site, the Blog has now been fully integrated into the main Sophianic Healing website.

Overall, I am very happy with the final results and hope that you enjoy the look, feel and content of the new website. So when you get a chance, please visit the new website and let me know what you think. I would love to hear your thoughts and comments.

Some Thoughts On Self-Destructive Behaviors and Self-Judgment

This morning I received Tom Kenyon’s latest “A Hathor Planetary Message” entitled Escalation of Chaotic Nodes and the Dismantling of 3-D Reality. (Note: For those unfamiliar with Tom Kenyon, Tom is a highly accomplished sound healer. If you have never read any of Tom’s channelings (or listened to his sound healings), you can find his website here.) Tom’s channelings of The Hathors (a group of interdimensional, intergalactic beings who assist humanity’s evolution on Earth) are a compelling source of contemporary spiritual information.

Given where we are in our planetary evolutionary cycle, many of the Hathor messages that Tom has channeled over the past few years have been about the ever-increasing difficulty of the challenges facing our planet and human beings in particular.

But this latest one is… well, it’s a bit of a doozy.

The following is a passage from this latest channeling that made a particular impression on me because of the soundness and usefulness of the insights and advice given:

Without mincing words, to use one of your phrases, we would say you are entering one of the more difficult passages of planetary transformation.

At this fork in the road, one path leads to self-destruction, madness, despair and hopelessness while the other fork leads to a deeper connection with your interdimensional or spiritual nature. It is this fork in the road we wish to explore.

It is not an either/or proposition. Many of you who possess a transcendent and interdimensional or spiritual sense of yourself may find yourselves, from time-to-time, on the path to madness and self-destruction in spite of your self-knowledge.

…

In its simplest terms the requirement to successfully make this passage through the escalation of Chaotic Nodes is deep authentic contact with your interdimensional or spiritual nature and the self-renewal that arises from such contact.

There are two things that particularly strike me about this communication.

The first is the assertion that the fork in the road is “not an either/or proposition”.

Although this statement is pretty much true in every circumstance where we find ourselves confronting a life decision (i.e. a “fork in the road”), the reality is that we nonetheless often approach these moments attached to the belief that once a decision is made we are stuck with it forever.

Thankfully, though we may at times forget it, life simply does not work that way. If it did, there would be no such thing as redemption or forgiveness (let alone love and compassion), and we would have all been long ago banished to burn in the infernal flames for all of eternity. My imagery here may be a bit dramatic, but certainly no more dramatic than the belief that we are forever stuck with our poor or ignorant choices.

Furthermore, no decision that we ever make about how we live our lives has a totally and completely uniform effect on us. Our choices almost always are, like the underlying intentions that give rise to them, decidedly mixed. Spiritual ascendance, like health, is not an event. It is a process. And at any given moment in that process, we are a mix of light and shadow — good and bad; conscious responses and unconscious reactions; adult and child. Or, in the imagery of the Hathor’s message, self-destructive AND self-preserving. The relative proportions may change, but we are always a mix.

Which leads to the other assertion from this communication that struck me — the suggestion that in order to successfully make it through these Chaotic Nodes the requirement is “deep authentic contact with your interdimensional or spiritual nature”.

Notice that nowhere in there does it say anything about judging, berating or castigating ourselves because we engage in self-destructive behaviors.

Just like any reasonable person would not expect perfect behavior at all times from human beings, neither does God. God is not keeping score. In fact, no one else of interest is really keeping score (and if they are, consider that we tend to call that type of behavior petty, at best).

God knows (better than we do) the difficulties of moving through some Earth experiences. And even a moderately self-aware person can understand that the only reason we engage in self-destructive behaviors is because we are suffering, we are in pain, and in those moments we are just looking for some sense of relief. And just like any reasonable person would, our higher power anticipates and expects that as humans beings going through these kinds of challenges we WILL, at times, choose to engage in self-destructive behaviors.

Of course, not judging ourselves does not mean we are absolved from taking responsibility for our actions. In fact, it is very important that we take responsibility for everything we do. It is how we come to truly know what it is that we are choosing. But in a world where we already know and expect that we will make mistakes, it would be irrational to believe that “taking responsibility” means feeling badly about ourselves.

In fact, a good rule of thumb is that when we no longer judge ourselves as bad because of our choices, that is when we know we’ve truly taken responsibility. We might feel regret, grief or perhaps even a sense of guilt about our choice or its consequences. But there is no feeling badly about ourselves — there is no self-judgment. If there is judgment, it means we are still in resistance - resistance to taking responsibility.

So if in response to life’s stresses and Chaotic Nodes you find yourself choosing self-destructive behaviors (and we all do), take a deep breath, take another deep breath, and then remember: it is not the end of the world; you are not stuck with your choice forever; and no one is keeping score. And if you’re patient and just wait for a bit (in my experience, usually no more than a few minutes), you will find that life soon enough brings you the opportunity to make a different, more loving or more self-preserving choice about something in your life. (And if you “blow” that one, don’t worry. The universe contains an inexhaustible number of opportunities to choose.)

But above all, don't waste your time judging yourself for your self-destructive behaviors. Judging ourselves and others is not what we were put here to do.

Our Earthly experience is a school for our soul, and we are here to learn who we really are (i.e. what we are “made of”) through the experience of the choices we make. And when the choices seem to get harder, it is only because we have advanced to the next grade-level.

Don't Be Cheap

Words of wisdom from uber-tech blogger John Gruber on his blog Daring Fireball:

Market share as a first priority generally doesn't end well. When you compete on quality, “almost the best” will often still do pretty well. When you compete on price, “almost the cheapest” always loses.

His words may have been addressed to the tech industry, but they could easily be applied to most of our life endeavors.

When you look at all the successful ventures around you, you are not necessarily looking at THE best, the MOST well known or even the most popular.  Success does not demand such stringent and narrow standards from you. It just asks that you do YOUR best.

On the 2012 Prophecies

By now, most people have probably heard at least something about the year 2012 and the date December 21, 2012 in particular. That is the date that the world will either (a) end, (b) be transformed or (c) experience the shortest day of the year and go on existing as it always has. It all depends on who you listen to.

At the extremes, some people dismiss the 2012 prophecies as some kind of "new age" folly, while others seem to embrace 2012 as a potent excuse to live out their apocalyptic fantasies. But the one thing that is most consistently associated with the period around 2012 is that it portends significant change of some kind.

For some time now, I have resisted writing or even discussing much about 2012, except in situations where others have specifically asked me about the subject, for two reasons. One, I have some, but not a lot, of knowledge about the 2012 prophecies, and so I am in many ways still working out my own perspective. Secondly, beyond the very real and meaningful work that many people have contributed to our understanding of the 2012 prophecies, the potential wisdom of these prophecies is often obscured by both the hype of the overly zealous believer and the derision of the cynical detractor. At times, this has made it more challenging for me to separate what feels real from what is only drama, leaving me with what feels like little more than soundbites and uncertainty.

But, having said that, things do feel different now. Although I still do not have what I would consider a deep understanding of the mysteries or the cosmology surrounding the 2012 prophecies, I do have a well developed sense of the guidance I have personally been receiving for some time now about the times through which we are living.

What I see is that regardless of what I may or may not believe about the 2012 prophesies, our world really is going through a tremendous amount of change. And, perhaps more importantly, that change feels evolutionary because it is affecting all existence at every level of consciousness -- from human to non-human, from sentient to non-sentient alike.

How the world moves through, and emerges from, these changes -- whether we come out in a better place or not -- is sure to depend in great part on the choices that we, as humans and de facto stewards of our planet, make (both personally and collectively) about how we live and, in particular, about how we are in relationship to each other and the world around us. Will we only allow ourselves to be led by the individual, self-serving and materialistic concerns of our ego, or will we embrace and be guided by a broader vision of who we are -- a vision that encompasses the individual but also acknowledges our interdependence and ultimate spiritual unity with all other individuals, beings and life forms that together encompass the many communities of which we are a part?

December 21, 2012 may very well mark some kind of meaningful shift in this evolutionary process -- I genuinely don't know. But I don't think we have to wait till then to see. Change is already here... it's time to choose.

The Gamer Advantage

From today’s Yahoo Games Blog comes this story about a video game called “Foldit” developed for the purpose of tapping the spatial skills of online gamers to solve real-world research problems:

Online gamers have achieved a feat beyond the realm of Second Life or Dungeons and Dragons: they have deciphered the structure of an enzyme of an AIDS-like virus that had thwarted scientists for a decade.

To the astonishment of the scientists, the gamers produced an accurate model of the enzyme in just three weeks.

I had read about this study a while back when it was first getting started and remember thinking how it was a great example of collaboration among people that showed mutual respect and a willingness to play to people’s strengths rather than the usual divide and conquer of much scientific research.

It’s great to see the early promise of this approach bearing fruit.

Zombie Like Caterpillars

Just in time for the Halloween season, a story of zombie-like gypsy moths. It has apparently been known for some time that among invertebrates, parasites are able to affect and change the behavior of their host in a zombie-like fashion. The exact mechanism through which this is accomplished, however, has not been known.

Now, in a study published in Science Magazine, scientists studying gypsy moths reveal that they have found a genetic basis for these aberrant behavioral changes. In particular, the study states that:

Gypsy moths infected by a baculovirus climb to the top of trees to die, liquefy, and “rain” virus on the foliage below to infect new hosts. The viral gene that manipulates climbing behavior of the host was identified, providing evidence of a genetic basis for the extended phenotype.

OK, so zombies are not just the stuff of science fiction. Somehow, not really all that surprising.

However, what really freaks me out about this story is that apparently the USDA Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) and The Northern Research Station have in the past partnered up to produce this baculovirus to use in the control of gypsy moth populations.(See here.)

But if this genetic link is only now being discovered, it means that we have been playing Russian roulette with germ warfare without really knowing what we were doing.

Scary, but again, somehow not really all that surprising.

If At First You Don't Succeed

From the anthology The Best Advice I Ever Got: Lessons from Extraordinary Lives (edited by Katie Couric and published by Random House), as excerpted on Yahoo), an almost unbelievable tale of Kathryn Stockett's experience writing her best-selling book The Help, the long and difficult road to getting it published and her incredible capacity for stick-to-it-tiveness:

It took me a year and a half to write my earliest version of The Help. I’d told most of my friends and family what I was working on. Why not? We are compelled to talk about our passions. When I’d polished my story, I announced it was done and mailed it to a literary agent.

Six weeks later, I received a rejection letter from the agent, stating, “Story did not sustain my interest.” I was thrilled! I called my friends and told them I’d gotten my first rejection! Right away, I went back to editing. I was sure I could make the story tenser, more riveting, better.

A year and a half later, I opened my 40th rejection: “There is no market for this kind of tiring writing.” That one finally made me cry. “You have so much resolve, Kathryn,” a friend said to me. “How do you keep yourself from feeling like this has been just a huge waste of your time?”

In the end, I received 60 rejections for The Help. But letter number 61 was the one that accepted me. After my five years of writing and three and a half years of rejection, an agent named Susan Ramer took pity on me. What if I had given up at 15? Or 40? Or even 60? Three weeks later, Susan sold The Help to Amy Einhorn Books.

Such an amazing and inspiring story of unwavering perseverance and determination. This story was particularly poignant for me because I loved reading "The Help" so much and felt such gratitude towards the author for the gift of her work. And this was before I even knew the backstory of what she went through to get it published.

Thank you, Kathryn, for never giving up and for always believing in your passion!

(Note: The Help has now been published in 35 countries and three languages. As of August 2011, it has sold five million copies and has spent more than a 100 weeks on the The New York Times Best Seller List. (Source, Wikipedia.) The movie version of the book was released August 10, 2011.)