As I investigated this pattern energetically, I discovered that holding back the breath is like holding back the spirit — holding back the empowerment of the spirit, or being unwilling to fully move into the power of the spirit. This was not new. I had seen this pattern of holding back full spiritual power in myself and in many others with whom I counseled. In many of us, there is a fear of moving fully into our power. Would we misuse this power? Would it be safe to be that powerful? Yet, this was the first time I had seen it manifest in the body in this particular way. Might this mean that our bodies are colluding in our process of awakening to our full spiritual power? Patterns had been much on my mind the weekend before I talked with Caroline Myss. I had been reading Anatomy of the Spirit, one of her first books, in which she points out the recurring patterns of spiritual development found reflected in the three religious traditions she had examined in depth. In this book, Caroline says, "The chakras [from the Eastern tradition], the sefirot [The Tree of Life, from Jewish roots], and the sacraments [Christian] all speak of interacting with power and of taking control of our own power in gradually more intense processes." When I asked Caroline what had changed for her since writing Anatomy of the Spirit, she explained that the gift the book had given her was that "it opened the door to see patterns of overlap in all truth now. Once you see things that way, you can never not see them that way again." When I asked Caroline what she might suggest to help people stay "on track" in their lives, she talked about a pattern that I suspect is universal. We "tend not to like the life we have"; we keep "searching for ways to make our lives other than the way they are." She goes on to point out that "there’s a lot of suffering that goes along with that. Life is about the choices we make right now. When you don’t act on those choices, you pay a serious price…Change is going to happen whether you like it or not, so why take the wool if you’re offered the wisdom? "If people strive to become more intuitive, they have to realize that means that revelation is going to happen to them. People make the naïve assumption that intuition is the capacity to always know what decisions to make or that it will always lead to avoiding painful ones, but it’s not like that. The more conscious you become in life, the more frightening your life can become for a period of time, until you have earned that level of trust that says, ‘I can afford not to know what tomorrow is because I have learned to trust.’ That’s the pain zone: that knowing that ‘my life is changing.’ "I don’t want to make the choices. They happen anyway. I’m supposed to have faith. I say I have faith. I obviously don’t have faith. Give me the faith to have faith. (This is) very traumatizing, especially when it comes down to where am I going to live? I’ve got guidance. Okay fine, and where’s my mortgage (payment)?" When you don’t act on those choices, you pay a serious price." Then there are the patterns that we see in society. Over and over again we have experienced traumatizing dramas unfolding — students killing students, parents killing children. What concerns Myss is that we immediately react emotionally without seeing what these events are saying to us. She comments, "I find that perhaps it would be wise for all of us to take a real good look at ourselves in terms of the overall significance of events like this." Caroline sees these events as the result of very complex dynamics. For her, deciding that the answer to violence is to take away guns is a "horrifying conclusion." "(People) don’t realize that once you tamper with one (element) of the bill of rights, you can tamper with them all. Guns are not illnesses; people are. I’m very much ‘pro’ the right to bear arms." Caroline Myss calls for moving away from the "emotional hysterics" by moving into "thinking clearly about what this means in terms of consciousness." One way to explore this would be to "gather in groups; to find our friends and gather in communities and say, ‘What is it we can do? What is it that we can learn about ourselves? What can we do to create communities that embrace people to the best of our abilities?’ " She sees that some kids have moved in a positive direction as a result of the shootings at Columbine High School by "putting together a commitment statement that says, ‘We will take better care of the kids in school and we will treat each other better.’ Those kinds of declarations are beautiful, but can we teach kids declarations on behalf of life?" Caroline feels the education system needs to bring a new consciousness into the schools. "Why aren’t there classes on how to honor life? Why do a handful of atheists have the right to prevent the divine from coming into school? Everyone else should have three minutes of silent prayer in the morning. Why should (an atheist’s) beliefs eclipse mine? "There a lot of things that we are learning from this that are not translating into hardcore academic education. It’s translating into therapy, but not education. We’re missing something here. We wait until the uneducated get blasted, and then we send them to therapy for compensatory things instead of saying, ‘Wait a minute! What we’re learning here is that we need to teach children the cause and effect of their negative thoughts. We need to teach them that they are responsible for (their) attitudes.’ We need to have what I call energetic education." This is one of Caroline’s next projects. She wants to write articles dealing with "the rules of energetic education." She plans to put together a curriculum about "the other world we live in": the energetic world. Her next book, called Sacred Contracts, has been in process since 1983, and will debut next year. It was curious to me that I never asked her more about that book, since much of what she talks about in her workshops is from the ideas she’s developing through writing it. But perhaps what we talked about really does apply. Once we recognize the patterns, how does that lead us to sacred contracts with ourselves and each other? How do the spiritual patterns we find in societies and religions address the sometimes chaotic patterns of life dramas? I plan to attend her workshop to find out. Other works by Caroline include Spiritual Power, Spiritual Practice, two audiotapes with meditations for morning and evening, and Why People Don’t Heal, and How They Can (book or video). Arlene Arnold is an Inner Reality Therapy counselor as well as a teacher and published author, and can be reached at Arlene@ArleneArnold.com |
Have you ever noticed how people you know seem to be going through similar challenges in their lives about the same time? Recently, I became aware that six different people I know are struggling with sleep apnea. A year ago, I didn’t even know what that was. Because I found it curious that so many within my limited frame of reference were encountering this physical phenomenon, I wondered what this was about. One aspect of sleep apnea is that the person stops breathing, sometimes for minutes, and then suddenly jerks awake enough to take a breath.