Create the Life You Imagine ~ June 2019
Opening the Upper Triangle
“Life is a mystery to be lived, not a problem to be solved.”
~ William Butler Yeats
We have completed our initial review of the seven power centers that comprise our spiritual energy system, and today we will begin an overview that starts the process of putting it all together to help you really understand what an exquisite being you are. The image above is rich with meaning and context and we will break it down over the next several weeks to help us visualize and organize our awareness as we go into a deeper exploration of our higher operating system and its capacity to transform our lives.
Let’s start by returning to the metaphor that the upper triangle is like a funnel that captures a portion of the Divine Consciousness and funnels some aspect of that Divine Light into each one of us. Each of us then, is a unique human vehicle for that Divine light to come into expression, and like a fingerprint, no two of us is the same for we are each a unique expression of that Divine Light. The energy of the Divine in us is our Soul. The Soul is the invisible part of us that is eternal and that is always and forever in connection with the Divine Source or the Divine Intelligence. The Soul stands outside of time and outside of this temporal human experience. Our Soul is the seed of our human being—the part of the Divine Light or the Divine Presence that is uniquely attached to us and that provides the blueprint for our fullest expression of that Divine Light. Our Soul serves as our Divine guide during our lifetime to help us grow and evolve in our spiritual awareness, until we remember the Divine Source from which we came.
Now let’s turn to my hourglass metaphor. If you think of your Self system as an hourglass and the white sand of the hourglass as that Divine Light, our work as human beings is to allow that sand, that Divine Light, to flow freely from the top chamber, our invisible Soul, into the lower chamber, our visible human personality, until our lower triangle is filled with Divine Light. When we focus our awareness on the energy of our Soul and let our Soul energy flow down into our human personality, we create the connection between Soul and Body that allows our personality to be a vehicle for our Soul to come into expression in our lives and in the world.
Remember that the first thing we have to do to allow the Divine Light of our Soul to flow into expression is to clear out the obstacles that have been built up in our personality through our history of pain, struggle, suffering and trauma, and that interfere with our ability to let that light shine through us. Through the difficult process of life, we all create personality patterns that interfere with our ability to trust the process of life and to remember who we really are. These patterns shadow the lower triangle and prevent the light of our Soul from fully entering into our being. These shadow patterns are developed in our well-intended human effort to protect ourselves from pain and suffering, but our patterns of protection tend to create deep seated feelings of anxiety and insecurity that block the flow of Soul energy and stop us from expressing the true beauty of our Soul energy. We learn to compensate for those feelings of anxiety and insecurity by using all of our life force trying to control the chaos of life, or we give away our life force away to others hoping that they will protect us, in a vain attempt to shield ourselves from the unpredictable changes and vagaries of life. Unfortunately, when we use our life energy to engage in these reactive and protective life patterns, we become enslaved to our small self personality and trapped in the lower triangle. We develop these patterns to shield us from the suffering of life, but in fact they simply choke off the flow of our Soul from the upper triangle and cut us off from our Soul awareness, which is our only true source of navigation back to our Divine Home.
Operating inside these small self patterns is like landing in a strange and chaotic city with the most advanced cell phone mapping device in your pocket, but turning off your GPS. You are bound to go around and around in circles without getting to your destination. We can release ourselves from these self-defeating and life-limiting patterns by engaging our inner awareness and by getting more adept at noticing when we are caught in a pattern of the lower triangle. Over time, most of our personality patterns begin to operate on auto-pilot and under our awareness. We tend to develop these patterns in early life and while they may seem to make some sense at the time, eventually we discover that the patterns lose their effectiveness and we don’t even consciously notice how we have limited our choices and our lives through the patterns we are caught up in.
If we can bring our awareness to a pattern, we then have a choice about whether the pattern is really serving us or whether we want to let it go. Turning on our spiritual awareness is like circling a strange city 45 times and then deciding to turn on the GPS and discovering a very simple route to your destination that you could not see using your current level of knowledge. Once the GPS gives you the route, you now have a choice to continue on with your current pattern or to choose a new route. If you decide to ignore your spiritual guidance in any moment then, like a good GPS system, your Soul won’t abandon you, it will simply take into account where you are now and begin the process of “re-routing.” Your spiritual guidance system never gives up on you and never gets frustrated. It takes note of every turn of your life and continues to offer you alternatives which you can take or reject. In this spiritual navigation system, we learn to expect that every experience of life is offering us a chance to choose: Will we continue to live by the limited power of our small self personality, or will we surrender our old patterns and trust the boundless and timeless wisdom of our Soul? The choice is ours.
If the purpose of life is to grow and to evolve and to remember who we are—to come back into alignment and connection with the Divine Light from which we emerged—then every experience of this life is part of that sacred journey. We can wander in the wilderness for 40 days and 40 nights, or for 40 years, or for 80 years, no judgement, because our experiences of light and our experiences of darkness are all part of the human process and our Soul will use them all to guide us back to our Divine Home. We can remember that Divine Light by practicing living inside of it, or we can remember it by living long enough in the shadows to notice the darkness and to wonder about the light. Eventually, whether in this lifetime or in the next life, whatever that next life is, we will find our way back to that Light because it is the Source of Who We Are, and any sense that we have ever been outside of that Divine Light will be seen as simply an illusion of the small self.
The gift of being in human form is that we all have free will. The choice is ours. We can continue operating in our old patterns and relying on our small self to drive us around in circles in the shadows of life for as long as we want to or need to. Our Soul does not judge us, it does not interfere with us, and it does not punish us. It just waits outside our awareness until we get so bored, or so tired, or so desperate that we look for another way to live. All we have to do to access our Soul wisdom is to be willing to surrender our old patterns, and our desire for control, and our need for clear answers and simple solutions, because life is a mystery to be lived, not a problem to be solved. Our Soul always draws us into the Mystery of the Divine Life, while our personality will always pull us into the problems of human life.
I often draw this two-triangle image for my life-coaching clients and place a wavy line across the center of the page with the upper triangle above and the lower triangle below. We talk about noticing the origins of the stories we are telling ourselves about life and about the difference in the inner voices when we listen in from these two different places. We notice that the small self of the lower triangle speaks in terms of danger, anxiety, struggle and control in a voice that is often critical, shaming or blaming. In fact, the voice of our small self may sound a lot like the voices of our parents, bosses, teachers, preachers or others who have unintentionally shamed, blamed or frightened us and who taught us directly or indirectly that we couldn’t trust ourselves or we couldn’t trust life. But the Soul Self of the upper triangle speaks to us very differently and if we practice listening with awareness we will discern a very distinct difference. The Soul Self always speaks to us kindly and gently of choices, options and awareness with an attitude of trust, patience, peace, compassion and love. The more we pay attention, the more we will hear the difference, and the more often we will engage with our option to choose which voice we will follow. The choice is ours.
After talking through the metaphor of this image with one particular client whose eyes hadn’t left the page, I asked the client what he saw in the image and he said, “it looks like the small self is drowning.” I’m not sure if he recognized it at the time, but this was really a Soul level awareness. The small self was drowning in the old patterns. For all of us, we will eventually have a life experience where we hit this point of surrender—when we will recognize the suffering being imposed by the small self thinking. At this point we can choose to stay with the suffering, or we can choose to let the small self die and risk living inside the light and truth of the upper triangle Soul. This is the point of transformation, of opening, to a new life and a very new reality. The new life will not be without difficulty or loss or struggle because that is part of being human, and as the old Buddhist saying goes, “pain is inevitable, but suffering is optional.” But the new life will be without fear, anxiety and suffering because we remember that no matter the circumstance, we are never alone and are always held in a loving embrace inside that Divine Light.
Wishing you the blessings and light of the Soul, as you create the life you imagine.
Tracy
Stepping Stones:
This week practice noticing the two voices that speak to you – the voice of the small self and the voice of the Soul Self. Get a piece of paper and draw the lower triangle and the upper triangle with a wavy line across the center of the page. See if you can identify a life pattern that is supported by the anxiety and worry of the small self. On the lower half of the page do some free writing or word mapping about the pattern and about the ways in which the small self talks to you. What is the name of the pattern? (e.g. I don’t matter, I am not enough, no one cares, life isn’t fair, I’m all alone, nothing works out for me, the other shoe is going to drop, etc.) What does your small self tell you about yourself when you are in this pattern? How does it feel in your body when you listen to this voice? How does it make you feel small? How does it make you lose power? Who are the voices from your past or present that reinforce the pattern? When did the pattern begin? What are the current events that trigger the pattern?
Now shake off that small self thinking by literally shaking the page and/or by moving your body a bit, shaking your hands and wiggling your toes, and shift your awareness to your upper triangle Soul Self. Take a few deep, cleansing, centering breathes and allow your mind to become still and quiet. Gently close your eyes and imagine light streaming down from the crown of your head and flowing over and through your body. Imagine a color or perhaps a symbol that are activated by that light. Now ask your Soul Self about the pattern and do some free writing or word mapping about what you hear. What are the messages your Soul wants you to hear? How does your Soul speak to you? How does it feel in your body when you listen to this voice? What is your Soul inviting you to learn from this pattern? What new choices or options does your Soul bring into your awareness? Who are the voices from your past or present that reinforce these Soul messages in your life? Make notes of all your body and mind awarenesses during this process as these will become signals to you as you practice that you are listening to your Soul.
This week practice listening for the wisdom of your Soul to speak to you. To inspire you this week, click below to find Kate's version of Let It Be to open the your channel to your Soul guidance. You might use it in the background during the breathing meditation, by going to the Products Page on my website and just scroll down to the Transcendence CD and click the track. Both of Kate's CD's are available for purchase on that page.