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Entering the Castle
An Inner Path to
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Your Power to Create
From wishful thinking
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Sample of the APRIL SALON
May 5, 2006
Editor’s note: Before I officially begin this Salon, I want to share that I have finished the draft of my new book, ENTERING THE CASTLE. Writing this book has been a rare and deeply mystical experience for me, as if I have kept company with one intensely spiritual friend for a solid seven months, to the exclusion of the rest of the world. In order to write this book, I withdrew – literally – into my own Castle, that is, my home/office. My inspiration for this book was St. Teresa of Avila’s brilliant work, THE INTERIOR CASTLE, in which she describes the path of illumination to God through a series of seven mansions, accessed through an ever-deepening experience of prayer and interior work. I believe that there is a mystical Renaissance erupting in the world today, a new “soul-calling”, so to speak. Many of you have already heard me lecture on this topic. In brief, I feel so many of you are being “called” to pursue a deeper path of service that reflects the spiritual path of the classic mystical traditional while maintaining your chosen physical lifestyles in the world. The call to be a mystic without a monastery – to be a person of service in life who recognizes that the world should be honored as a symbolic community of souls – speaks of an emerging expression of power and grace that prior to now was contained within monastic walls. Channeling grace for healing, for example, or becoming holders of sacred teachings for the sake of passing on truth, are commitments typical of the monastic life. Now many people are receiving the inspiration to take up these tasks within the mainstream of our contemporary spiritual culture.
I expand on these very rich and intriguing ideas in my new book, ENTERING THE CASTLE. I do the same in my workshops on the CASTLE, which, I am very pleased to say, are becoming extraordinarily popular far quicker than I had anticipated given that the book will not be released until next spring. (However, I have already scheduled workshops with the theme of ENTERING THE CASTLE in lands filled with castles because I love the idea of combining the mystical setting of Ireland and of Scotland with an interior soul journey. These are countries with heritages of myth and mysticism, from druids to saints. The workshop in Scotland on ENTERING THE CASTLE is actually conducted in a castle. In both instances, I’ve chosen to limit the number of participants as the subject of mysticism is best served in a more intimate circle.) The excitement that this subject is generating tells me that individuals very much relate to the archetype of the new mystic who is called to be an effective agent for change in this world through developing a soul with mystical stamina.
It feels wonderful to be able to share the report that I have made it through the draft of ENTERING THE CASTLE. I have spent a week wandering about my home, feeling disconnected from a routine that demanded I maintain the house in complete silence and no visitors – except when necessary – for six months. I’ve kept as close to a monastic lifestyle as possible and I can tell you that it is very strange to go through “re-entry” after being consumed with one project night and day, day and night. So, that’s where I’ve been……and now onto the rest of my life, like the April Salon.
In our last salon, I included a survey entitled, “The Fact-Fiction-Fantasy Life Survey” for your personal enjoyment. It was intended to generate thoughts around one essential question: Do you invest the majority of your creative energies into productive enterprises or does most of your creativity go into postponing your future, your dreams, your health and well-being, and the life you would prefer living? Many of the questions were deliberately light-hearted, yet the intention underneath them was not. Ultimately the entire quest represented by this survey could be reduced to a two-part question: Do you respond to intuitive directives and are you able to then manifest what you are being directed to do?
In truth, the real object of this survey goes far deeper than that question suggests. Manifesting dreams or manifesting health or shifting the direction of your life path represents a cosmic paradox of archetypal proportions. Our contemporary spiritual culture has been saturated for decades now with the perception that we can manifest anything and everything we want “just like that”. Books providing what amounts to dusted off alchemical rituals of manifestation in usually three or seven easy steps assures readers that by following these procedures, their life dreams and ambitions – including drawing a life partner to themselves! – will just happen. Now people, if getting what you wanted out of life were really that easy, don’t you think everyone would be a lot happier than they are? And they certainly would be far more fulfilled and content…so where is the glitch in this thinking??? Let’s call it an absence of a combination of common sense and knowledge of basic life wisdom.
Continued in the April Salon...
MANIFESTATION AND COMMON SENSE
First of all, manifesting your dreams and making changes in your life is not entirely in your hands; in fact, let’s apply a bit of common sense right off the bat. Consider how much of your life ingredients are set in motion from the second of conception: the whole of your DNA, your sex, your astrological data, and your body. By the time you are born, the “package” you came in has already determined a fair percentage of the choices around which you will live your life. That is not to say you do not have “choice”; what is a given, however, is that you arrive within parameters of choice. There is absolutely nothing you can do about your date of birth and the vast majority of people – vast majority – will not change their sex during their lifetime and these facts are themselves choices embodied within the flesh. You certainly cannot change your DNA or your ethnic heritage. So already you are a “work of choices in progress” from the moment you are born.
Secondly, the art and act of the manifestation of change is as simple as it is complex, as effortless as it is ruthless, and as much the result of spontaneous Divine chaos as it is a litany of conscious prayers invoking the winds of change. Everything in your life is threaded into a vast cosmic weave, a grand cosmic compass. While your soul maintains a connection to this Divine structure of cause and effect, order and destruction, death and rebirth, all of which are the psychic ingredients within the cosmic progression of life, our connection to that vast cosmic network of life is left to the maturity of our ego/personality, which generally keeps its eyes lowered to the earth, grappling for methods of survival and continually postponing the adventures the soul longs to have while embodied in a vessel of flesh and bones.
So now let’s apply this to the symbolic meaning of that little survey and to the theme of this Salon, which is one of taking considering the wisdom of pausing for a moment and evaluating the goals, habits, and attitudes that work like mechanical wheels with your psyche, almost on automatic pilot. At some point, as you move from birthday to birthday, decade to decade, you have to take time to go through your thinking process and evaluate how you talk to yourself, including what you tell yourself you should be doing or could be doing or will be doing someday. Through the years I have actually had the same conversation with a few people who have consistently told me, “I know I was born to do something wonderful,” and you know what? They are still doing that same “un-wonderful” thing, fantasizing about living another life something but always finding reasons to postpone moving forward. I finally realized, due in part to these individuals (all of whom were from different workshops and in fact from three different countries), that they were living off the meager psychic dividends of their fantasies, and these were sufficient to keep them going along in life. Would they ever get to a point where they would admit, “You know what? I am never going to do anything differently. I am never going to change a thing because I don’t want to work any harder than I am. In fact, I don’t really want to work hard at all. I don’t want to put out the amount of energy it takes to ignite a new life path. It’s just too much work. I would prefer that everyone else change around me in order to make my life more exciting because I really do not intend to do one thing differently. I am bored and I like to imagine that things could be different. But I am too insecure to take a risk and too dependent to do anything alone. So there. That’s the truth of who I really am.” What would happen to their lives if they did admit this? Would that make them absolutely miserable or would that initiate contentment that only unmasked honesty could create? Which would it be?
And would it be cruel or an act of service to pierce through this veil of deception? Which is it? If an individual had an illness, for example, and asked me for a reading, I would feel spiritually obligated to share what I perceived in their energy system as accurately as I could. Many times this information is painful, sometimes re-awakening traumas, and sometimes information can even be very humiliating for a person. And then there are the impressions of the serious nature of a physical illness, none of which is a pleasure to communicate. In fact, it’s a nightmare for me. Is it more compassionate, then, to withhold this information because it is so revealing and painful? Is that considered an act of service or is this need to protect someone doing more harm than good? Certainly when it comes to helping a person to heal, withholding information because it is not good news is the worst possible choice.
So is it any less an act of healing to help people to recognize that they nurture toxic psychic patterns in themselves, especially since we are talking about the core patterns regarding how one determines the day-to-day quality of life? We are not talking about how one chooses salad dressing after all. Just to give this discussion its proper backdrop, let me refer to the symbolic significance of just one of the questions from last month’s survey, question 17, which read:
You dream about getting away from the life you have, selling everything and moving to a new life. If you really had the chance for this new life, would you take it?
Fact____Fiction_______Fantasy_________.
Continued in the April Salon...
THE LIFE WISDOM WORTH KNOWING: Update Your Goals, Habits and Attitudes
The other day I was talking to a stock broker at a workshop – no kidding – and he was running down a list of investments. I was pressing him on the matter of investments because of the rather volatile nature of the planet these days…not to mention Washington, DC. So I asked him, “What would you recommend as shrewd investments these days?”
He listed these investments that would mature in 20 years, to which I said, “Sweetie, that’s what you suggest to a couple of newly weds, not to someone my age.”
Our life goals need to change, as do our habits and our attitudes about what we want from life and perhaps more importantly now, what we want to contribute to life. Last year, I had a bit of an epiphany during one workshop and I’ve shared that experience with my audiences every since that day. Without exception, audiences all over the place breathe a collective sigh of relief when I bring up this matter, as if someone had finally released them from being held in a “fantasy captivity”, prisoners to a perception that they must “do” something or live a life other than the one they are living in order to be happy. What happened during this one very special workshop was that I suddenly, deeply, truly “saw” my audience in a way I had never seen them before and I realized in that moment the folly of what I was teaching. Building self-esteem, etc., is hardly a folly, however, part two of that lecture – which was directing them to “apply” their new found self-esteem toward building a brand new life “somewhere out there” for themselves was completely a folly. This formula of developing self-esteem and then making choices that reflect a higher potential in one’s life, is not at all without substance. But it certainly wasn’t working, at least not as well as it should. And then I realized that the problem was that most people had bought into visions they would never, ever be able to accomplish in this life – not because they couldn’t, but because they were not meant to accomplish these visions.
The idea of finding your “highest potential” inspired hundreds of thousands of people to consider that there is another life contained within or around or above the life they’ve been living that holds their “highest potential”; they just have to find a way to get there. Unfortunately, the more practical, occupational side of our nature hijacked the meaning of “highest potential” and it quickly became synonymous with the “perfect occupation by Divine decree” – a mythic occupation and a mythic life, if there ever was one. Thus, one’s highest potential became more and more a true holy grail….no where to be found. But the deeper meaning of highest potential refers to your Sacred Contracts and how consciously you position your soul in your life.
Continued in the April Salon...
SOMETHING FOR YOU TO THINK ABOUT...
Think about your goals, your thoughts, and how you talk to yourself. Do any of your ideas or goals need updating because “they aren’t really you”? I can tell you that if you are living a dream that is not your dream, it can hurt you deeply and cause such unnecessary discontentment. To wake up and realize that you are exactly where you are supposed to be and then make a commitment to make your life work to its fullest…that could be the greatest gift you could ever give yourself. But that conversation is between you and God….I only suggest that you have that conversation. It is well worth it.
To register for the Myss Salon
Myss.com Events
May 2006 - ENTERING THE CASTLE: A Workshop For Healing
-Open To The Public-
The Crossings
May 18-21, 2006
Austin TX.
815 220 8723 SOLD OUT
June 2006 - Entering the Castle - Spiritual Direction for Dialoging with Your Soul
New York, NY
Date: June 4, 2006, 10:00 am - 5:00 pm
Sponsored by: Hay House
Location: Hotel Pennsylvania - Skytop
June 2006 - HOLOS
Oak Park Il.
Registration is with a sponsor.
Contact Roberta - 888 242 6105
July 2006 - Essential Life Wisdom
The Conference Works
Burbank, CA
July 28-29, 2006
THE CMED INSTITUTE
2007 Classes
CMED "Sacred Contracts"
CMED "ENTERING THE CASTLE: Spiritual Direction for Dialoging With Your Soul"
CMED TOURS
A Mythic Encounter With Druids, Saints, Fairies, And Celts
August 24 - September 3 2006
CMED Workshop "Entering the Castle"
Scotland April 19-21, 2007
Turnberry / Culzean Castle
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Myss Interactive Tests
Welcome to the PNP: Welcome to the Personal Nutrition Provider. We are delighted to be able to share this with you. Dr. Susan Taylor, in association with Dr. Caroline Myss and L. Rose Bruce developed the PNP. It is based upon the theory that there exists a relationship between our spiritual, psychological, emotional and physical being that can be supported by the foods that we choose in our daily diet. Dr. Susan Taylor has used this template over the past 18 years in her private practice. The general concept of this nutrition provider is that we are all individuals biochemically as well as psychologically and that our makeup is supported by certain foods and not others. In other words, what is good for one is not necessarily good for another. When we eat for our own makeup we create the balance and harmony within ourselves that promotes a natural state of health.
Welcome to the CHII: Checklist of Health Issues and Illness. We are delighted to be able to share this with you. Drs. Caroline Myss, C. Norman Shealy and L. Rose Bruce developed the CHII. It is based upon the theory developed by Caroline Myss and Norm Shealy over the past 15 years concerning the relationship between spiritual, psychological, and emotional factors and health or illness. Specifically, issues and illnesses relating to seven energy centers (chakras) are defined. The general concept is that unresolved spiritual, psychological or emotional factors impact the flow of energy in the chakras and may result, over time, in a weakening in the system and eventually in a physical illness. Conversely, balance and harmony within ourselves promotes a natural state of health. In short, our biography becomes our biology.
