The soul is eternal, the body is transient

“Most men do not as yet distinguish with accuracy between themselves as the THINKER, persistent in time and space, and the vehicle through which they think, which is ephemeral and transient” Alice A Bailey – Treatise on Cosmic Fire

Ponder on this statement.  Our body, the physical part of us in this incarnation, is the vehicle for the soul.  Imagine a car.  The car is the vehicle, but by itself it goes nowhere.  It has the potential, and the means by which to do so, but it requires a driver to be the guiding force and steer the car where it needs to go.  The same applies with the soul and the physical body/personality self.  The physical body is the vehicle, and it has the potential and means by which to go around in this 3D world, but it needs the soul, the ‘thinker’ to be the driving force. 

This body is just a jacket for the more eternal part of yourself.  Anyone who has witnessed the passing of a loved one will know that once the moment of death occurs, whatever spark that animated that loved one and made them who they are has been extinguished, and you are just left with the shell, the vehicle that housed that spark.  That spark is soul.

Lifetime to lifetime we work on our lessons and master aspects of ourself which are stored in the causal rings of the monad, and this information, these gifts, are there for the soul to draw upon to feed to its current incarnation.  I like also to think of a puppet.  The personality is the puppet and the soul is the puppet master.  We need to allow the soul to be the guider of our actions and thoughts, as that is who we really are.  This body of ours, this incarnation, will come to an end at some point, but that is not the end of us.  We are soul, we are eternal.

Contracts

Before we come into incarnation, we meet with the karmic board and decide what lessons need to be learnt in the coming lifetime, and what situations and opportunities will allow us to master those lessons.  We choose the parents which will give us great learning and mastering opportunities.  We make contracts with other people for them to come into our lives and play a part so that we are given an opportunity to master a lesson which we have decided we need to learn.  Whether or not we take up the opportunity, or recognise it as an opportunity is another matter!

Bearing this in mind, we have to look at everything from the bigger perspective.  When we are stuck in the middle of a personality drama, it can be hard to recognise the gift and learning opportunity in an experience.  If someone has just done something seemingly terrible to us, our personality can go on a wobble and play the victim.  We can then experience issues such as unresolved anger.  We are the wronged party, we didn’t deserve that to happen to us etc etc.  However, if we look at it from the bigger perspective, that person has made a contract to come into our life to carry out the said deed, and within that comes a great gift of us being able to forgive the person.  How can we experience forgiveness without something to forgive?

There could be other qualities and lessons that we need to master.  Do we need to be loving, do we need to be nurturing, do we need to be selfless, do we need to be giving?  In order to experience anything we require people to come into our life to act out their part of the contract and provide us with the opportunity for growth.  We too, play our part in the lives of others.

So next time you are wrestling with the effects other people have on you, try and see the bigger picture of what is going on and see the gift and learning opportunity in the experience.  It is better to try and get to grips with something and master it rather than being consumed by the personality.  If at first we don’t get it, the soul will try, try again!

"We have both been All Of It. We have been the Up and the Down of it, the Left and the Right of it. We have been the Here and the There of it, the Now and the Then of it. We have been the male and the female, the good and the bad; we have both been the victim and the villain of it."

"Thus have we come together, you and I, many times before; each bringing to the other the exact and perfect opportunity to Express and to Experience Who We Really Are.”

– The Little Soul and the Sun, Neale Donald Walsch

 

 

Jealousy

“Don’t waste your time on jealousy.  Sometimes you’re ahead, sometimes you’re behind, the race is long and in the end, it is only with yourself” – Mary Schmich

I love this quote.  Mary Schmich wrote it as part of some advice to a class of graduates in 1999.  It was popularised in a song called ‘Everybody’s Free to Wear Sunscreen’.  If you haven’t come across it, I recommend a read – there is some wonderful advice in her words.

Jealousy is an interesting concept.  We live in a very material world where jealousy seems to be bred into us at a young age.  We even have the well-known couple – The Jones’ to keep up with!  But jealousy extends far beyond material possessions.  We can be jealous of others for non-physical reasons – even down to being jealous of someone in a spiritual sense – they seem more ‘enlightened’, they meditate more, they seem to have better intuition etc. etc. the list can be endless.

I feel Mary has it right though – the race is long and in the end it is only with yourself.  We need to learn not to compare ourselves to others and what they’re doing, what they have etc. etc.  We need to be centred in ourself and follow what is fulfilling and nurturing to us alone and not even entertain what others are doing , or how what we are doing may seem to them.  By standing in the self, it will remove you from the glamour and competitiveness in the world, and that in turn will allow others to free themselves of it too.

When we choose to live our life as soul, and to follow our soul guidance, everything will be in perfect balance and timing for us to master our lessons with grace and ease.  We will have exactly what we need in the moment we need it.  Therefore jealousy is taken out of the equation.  We are each on our own unique soul journey, so why should we worry about what anyone else is getting up to or what they have?  Our journey, our experience, is perfect for us, right here, right in this moment, in this time and space which we call now; and as every moment is ‘now’, everything is always perfect, isn’t it?!?

Please Put On Your Own Oxygen Mask Before Helping Others

OK, so we’re not on an airplane, but we are on a journey.  I’m using this analogy to demonstrate that we need to make sure we do our own work as well as helping others.  We need to be taking care of ourselves, our own needs and our own journey otherwise how are we going to have anything to give to another? 

Imagine the oxygen mask as being your connection to soul.  We need to make that connection within ourselves, and then move from that point outwards to meet others on a soul-to-soul equal level.  From this place we can act from a place of compassion and detachment rather than sympathy and attachment.  This helps lift another out of the space they are in, rather than meeting them down in the hole and helping to keep them there.

I love this quote by Alan Cohen:  “You can be helping many people, but if you are not helping yourself, you have missed the one person you were born to heal”.

It is more appealing to many people to be helping others.  Don’t get me wrong, helping others is a good thing, we are designed to be here in loving service to others.  However, helping others shouldn’t be a replacement or a distraction from doing our own work.  That is our main mission here.  We need to be focusing on our own issues and lessons and sorting them out and then move on to helping others with their problems.  This is what loving service is. 

Another well-used saying is “physician heal thyself”.  How can you help another if your battery is drained so flat that there is no charge to help jump-start another person?  If you keep neglecting yourself and helping person after person, soon you will have nothing left in you to be able to help yourself or them.  So, close your eyes, take a slow, deep, centring breath, and connect to your soul.  See the line of light coming down from the plane of the soul and entering through your crown and anchoring in your heart centre.  Feel that still, quiet space within.  Just look, see what it is that you need to be working on for you right now.  That is your oxygen mask.  Please put it on before helping others....

The soul and the monad

I’d like to talk a little about the soul and the monad.  This picture is called the ‘chart of the divine self’ and is sold by The Summit Lighthouse (www.tsl.org)  It can be useful to visualise this picture as we talk about the communication channel between the soul extension (personality), the soul and the monad.

 

God/source/creator (however you feel comfortable terming this) wanted to send its light out into the 3^rd dimensional world, the earth.  So it sent out sparks known as monads or spirits.  This is our I AM presence and is our god-self.  There are an infinite number of monads.  In the picture above you will see the monad at the top of the picture, surrounded by the causal rings.  These are the store house of everything we have ever experienced and mastered in all of our lifetimes. 

In order to be able to experience incarnation in a 3^rd dimensional, low vibratory world, the monadic energy had to be slowed down.  Otherwise it would be like trying to plug the light bulb in our house directly into the power station creating electricity.  It would explode.  Therefore the electricity needs to be stepped down and converted before it reaches our house and the fitting we can plug the bulb into.  Our soul (the white middle figure in the picture) was created as the individual aspect of us that is in permanent contact with the monad and creator.  It is the mediator between our personality self and our spiritual god-self.  Each monad has 12 souls attached to it, and each of those souls has 12 soul extensions attached. Our intuition is information from our soul dropping into our conscious mind.  Of course, we can choose to ignore our soul and live only from the personality and ego self. 

The energy should flow from god/source, through our monad, through our soul and then come into our energy field and into the heart centre.  When we have this clear communication channel, we experience flow in our life and are in tune with our soul’s purpose.

The information exchange is a bit like a jigsaw puzzle.  The monad has the full picture of where we have been and where we are going.  The soul has part of the picture, and attracts to us the people and situations we need for us to master our lessons and evolve spiritually on our path.  Our personality self, on its own is almost fumbling around in the dark, it cannot see the bigger picture as it is not illumined.  We need to connect in with our soul so that we can merge with it and start living from the place of the soul.  We need to master our lower bodies for the soul to fully be able to integrate with our physical body.

 

It is easy to picture the god/source - monad - soul - soul extension progression in this picture:

In this way you will clearly see that you, as an individual soul extension, in incarnation upon the earth, have 11 other members in your soul family, and 143 other members in your monadic family.  Every time you are working on mastering a spiritual lesson, you are not only affecting yourself, you are also affecting the other members of your soul family and monadic family.  You are never alone!

 

Seed Thoughts

A seed thought is just what it says, a seed or a kernel, which, under the right circumstances has the potential to unlock all the hidden treasures within and blossom forth into something greater than itself.  Within the smallest seed lies the potential for great things.

A seed thought is a few words or a sentence which is taken into meditation, reflected upon within the light of the soul, and then unlocked for our soul to pour forth the contained wisdom back into our lower mind.

The wisdom contained in a seed thought is not necessarily to be unlocked in one moment of blinding inspiration, a eureka! or a-ha! Moment (though this is not impossible) but rather one will find that with consistent effort in consecutive meditation sessions, another piece of the puzzle will unfold, another facet will be glimpsed and another layer of the wisdom discovered.  Much like peeling back the layers of an onion, each occasion of effort will reveal the next level of understanding and insight.

Much like "the will of the soul is my will" is a seed thought to ponder and reflect on, try this one: "I am the soul, the soul am I".  Take this thought into meditation every day and see the layers of wisdom unfold.  This one is quite a powerful seed thought and you might be surprised at what gets revealed.  I was!

Discipline – the personality struggle

In esoteric circles, the word ‘disciple’ is used for the aspirant on the spiritual path.  This is not used in the religious context, but rather in the ‘follower of a school of thought’ definition¹.  The word disciple conveys just what is needed – discipline.  In order to progress on our spiritual path and to master the three lower bodies (etheric, emotional and mental) we need a huge amount of discipline.  In order to follow the path of soul and progress with ascension and the mastery of our lessons, we need to be disciplined in thought and action.  This can prove to be one of our biggest struggles as the personality will rebel against it.  In order to ascend and achieve a soul-merge, the personality has to step aside and eventually be dissolved.  Why therefore, would it want to allow us to get rid of it?  So it puts up a fight, it allows us to be consumed by it, and to be distracted from our spiritual path.  Meditation is key to our spiritual advancement.  In this matter, Djwhal Khul through Alice Bailey is quoted as saying:  “may it not be truly said, if any one claims not to be able to find fifteen minutes out of the one thousand four hundred and forty minutes which constitute a day, that they are not interested? Fifteen minutes can always be found, if the will is on the side of the effort”.²

In what ways are you letting your personality –self distract you from your path?  Try to see if you can find 15 minutes to make some soul contact today.  This mantra may help: THE WILL OF THE SOUL IS MY WILL.

 

¹ Free dictionary by Farlex www.thefreedictionary.com

² From Intellect to Intuition – Alice A Bailey