a structure for spirit

Artist Alice Popkorn

When the needs of the heart go unmet, the pain can be excruciating. In order to cope with feelings that overwhelm or threaten survival, elaborate strategies are constructed to compensate. A common tactic to insure survival is to abandon our own heart in an illusionary attempt to avoid the pain we feel. Maybe if I pretend I have no heart it won’t hurt so much. We lose a part of our vital life force energy. A loss of our Soul occurs.

If we fear that what we need we will not receive, our efforts are used to keep the feelings of our heart under control. We learn to manipulate the emotions of others in order to get what we want, inflict guilt or shame to coerce another to get the love and attention we seek. We learn to smile without any feeling for a false sense of approval. This begins an interplay of how our masculine energy of action and will meets our feminine energy of emotion and feeling.

This coping strategy is similar to a software program in that it downloads information into the hard drive of the physical body. In response to the vibrations of the program, the body will shape itself in a certain way. Anger, bitterness, despair, despondency vibrate at much lower frequencies and create a density in the body as compared to the higher vibrations of love, gratitude and compassion. If we are attempting to control our rage or sorrow, enormous tensions are required in muscles and tissues to restrain these energies and keep them from flowing. Constrictions may be noted in and around the heart, chest and jaw. Our movements may be become stiff or painful. The energy demands required to keep ineffective coping strategies running are tremendous and place excessive strain on our organs. All systems in our body are affected; digestion, respiratory, immune, musculoskeletal. These tensions and knots that initially serve to suppress pain in our body and numb what we are feeling ultmately become perpetrators to the pain they are looking to avoid.

We are often blind to the awareness that these programs are even running.

Artist Kevron

When we step into ceremony we are essentially updating our software progams. We are setting in motion, through our intention and work with the divine intelligence of Spirit, different programs that are ultimately downloaded into our physical body. Our body begins to restructure itself to organize around this new information. This is not always comfortable. We are birthing into the unknown. And like any birth it can come with pain. You may notice aches, pains or stiffness that arise out of nowhere, and just as randomly disappear. Disturbances of sleep and digestion can be common. Having a physical practice is so supportive, especially during this time of rebalancing. Any practice that uses intentional movement or integrates energy with movement of the physical body, such as yoga, tai chi, dance, martial arts, is so important with ceremony work because we are ultimately affecting changes in the physical body.

The healing tonic of a walk in Nature cannot be underestimated.

Emotional and mental agitations may increase as energy moves and shifts. Meditation is essential to help bring stillness to these waters. It allows us to ride these waves of turbulence as a witness rather than being swallowed whole and consumed by them. Diva Carla, Sacred Lodge Sister of We the Women, is generously sharing two healing meditations for women and men taking part in the New Moon Sacred Union Despacho. These rituals support your process of integration and are resources for sexual empowerment. For women she offers the recording of a Women’s Self-Love Ritual connecting a woman to her Sacred Feminine Power Source at the center of the Wheel of Life. For Men she offers the gift of the King’s Self-Love meditation, which connects a man to his inner masculine fire, the archetypes of Mars and Jupiter and the relationship to the Sacred Feminine. There is medicine for women to hear the men’s meditation and for men to also hear the women’s meditation. Give yourself the gift of these meditations as you integrate the powerful work of this ceremony.

Let us recognize not only the sacredness of ceremonial work but the divine interconnection this creates with all of our being, especially the divine temple in which we reside.

AHO my friends! AHO!

Karen Chrappa
Author of A Structure for Spirit
www.karenchrappa.com

Read Full Post »