- The ethereal soul
- Aligning soul with the personality
- Transformation of anger
Spring is the time of the trees. The wood element, allways growing and expanding. Trees are teaching us that we are united like a forest in our roots and branches. Our roots are our ancestral lines. Our branches are technology, communication and our common vision. The organs active in the spring are the liver, creating new life, and the gall bladder, the coordinator and decision maker.
The liver houses the ethereal soul. The secret of the golden flower
The ethereal soul opens to the eyes with our dreams and visions.
According to the Taoist and Tibetan traditions, the ethereal soul enters at the time of conception and departs from the crown of the head at the time of death. The Tibetan book of the dead: Bardo Todol is describing the passage of the soul back to its celestial family, its “home”, which lasts 59 days after death. Tibetan folk prepares for a good death and reincarnation by meditation, but more importantly by practising compassion and forgiveness, the virtues of the ethereal soul. In this way is karma: pain caused to others in the past, resolved.
The soul carries our unique qualities and place in the universal plan. While the ego is time bonded and based on our personal history, the soul is timeless, and united with the whole of creation.
Self-realisation means letting go of an acquired self-image, the egoic self, to embody the soul: the essential self, and to live from the soul.
C.G. Jung studied the soul and called it unconcious mind. He distinguished the individual and the collective unconscious as they shows up in dreams and symbols. He wrote about his own soul explorations in his autobiography titled “memories, dreams reflections”.
The same information about the soul we find in the Ellenic tradition .The soul meets the three fates after death: Atropos, meaning the one that cannot change, represents the past deeds, cause and effect. Klotho, meaning weaving, represents the present. Lachesis, meaning luck or lottery ticket, represents the future.
The soul as a healer in the Asclepeia of ancient Greece.
Ancient Greece had 365 Asclepeia, sacred healing sites, where Asclepius the god of medicine was healing people in their dreams.
Studies on these healing sites show that their orientation and shape was directing Sun light to concentrate and clean people from illness. They also have springs, facilitating purification through water.
At night the people slept in underground rooms, where Asclepios would come to them in dream, and either heal them, or guide them in what they had to do to get well. Before they slept, they recapitulated the deeds of the day, choosing what was virtuous from what was not wished for. In this way they were inviting guidance in their dreams. Asclepios is the god of medicine and the embodiment and delegate of Apollo, the sun, on earth. Asclepios is also the father of Hippocrates bringing on the lineage of the sun through the ages. Physicians still today bow to the Hippocratic oath.
I swear by Apollo the Physician, by Asclepius, by Hygieia, by Panacea, and by all the gods and goddesses, making them my witnesses…..
Here you make another transition from Greece to Christianity…..I suggest you give the reader a head´s up and tell me why. In rhetorical sense I feel you use too much logos – I need pathos!
The dream body as guide and healer is known as Heather, the guide in the Sufi tradition, and prophet Elias in the Christian tradition.
The Resurrection of Christ on Easter Sunday, opens the gates for all souls who are set free to come and go between the worlds for 40 days. The passage of Christ through the 7 passions into eternity is a profound symbolism for the spirit of Spring.
Alignment of soul and personality
A reason that our decisions and plans are difficult to realise can be internal conflict between the time confined personality and the timeless soul. While we are part of a universal plan, the personality often efforts to create its own life. A gestalt dialogue between these 2 positions proves that the conflict is not real, and that personality and soul are made in heaven to support each other.
- Take a seat of yourself as you know yourself in your self-image and personal history. Notice how you feel here, the colours, the sound of your voice, where in your body are you more present, or any other particulars.
- Take another seat as your soul, sense what are the qualities and the atmosphere, and amplify these. See what your soul wants to convey to you.
- Choose a plan you have for the next year. From the place of personality strategically develop this plan.
- Move to the chair of soul and look at your plan again. Add any steps or information which you receive from this position.
- Keep moving from one position to the other until personality and soul merge and align.
I would perhaps make a specific text on ANGER and not add more here.
CLIMATE IS THE EMOTIONS OF THE WORLD
Healthy anger is assertiveness, confidence in saying no and having clear boundaries. It is determined direction, commitment, expansiveness, light hearted expansiveness. At times of growth it gives people the strength to separate from the mother or carers. In our society we often are ignorant of how to support the explosive growth of children and especially for girls, assertiveness, strength and confidence are rejected.
If this spontaneous assertiveness is compromised, your space and boundaries are not protected, you let someone push you to do things you don’t want to do, you may feel frustrated anger. But negative anger does not help you expand and grow. It is like poison.
Being angry is like taking poison and expecting that someone else will die from it. The Dalai Lama
People suffer immensely from anger and the inability to forgive.
It is the most painful emotion because of its attacking nature. That makes it have so many derivatives like hatred, rage, resentment, hostility, jealousy, envy, frustration, control, guilt and shame. People often find it easier to attack themselves than others, and find it very difficult to forgive themselves. Becoming aware of self blame may be the beginning of forgiveness.
Byron Bays founded school called the Healing journey based on forgiveness after she had cured herself from cancer. She discovered that forgiveness redeems the soul and body from toxic emotions
The Dalai Lama, has become a world spiritual leader after the occupation of Tibet. As the 14th reincarnation of the Buddha of Compassion he teaches compassion as the highest form of love and forgiveness as the highest virtue. When asked who is his greatest spiritual teacher, he said: “Mao Che Tung”.
THE SPRING CONSTITUTION
The emotion can be seen in the eyes
Anger is an emotion that springs outwards
The wood-Spring temperament is distinguished by tireless creativity, a tendency to protest and participate in common themes. The expansive nature of the wood element, the function of the liver to allow the flow of energy and emotions, is making people with Spring temperament want to shout, express themselves and make things happen.
They need clear direction in life, to know they are in control of things. They often need to move a lot, to release pend up energy. The opposite can also be true, pessimism, timidity, apathy. Uprooted people turn to alcohol as a painkiller, as they perpetually suffer a collective trauma. They need to remember their soul’s home and roots in spirit.
Anger transforms through compassion to forgiveness
The steps necessary to transform negative emotions are outlined in the RAIN model developed by Tara Brack. RAIN stands for recognition, acceptance, integration and nurturing. https://www.tarabrach.com/rain/
1)Recognition: Becoming conscious of pend up anger. The core statement of Gestalt therapy: “Awareness is enough” shows that recognition of anger opens acceptance, integration and nurturing.
We need to become conscious of stress and anger before we can relax and forgive. It is especially difficult with people you love.
Yet the need to forgive is great, and helps shape the right conditions.
Sometimes it takes a lifetime until we develop enough compassion to receive the impact of an event. The presence of a friend or a therapist can help the person develop enough presence.
2)Acceptance: That is where compassion is needed: Being able to stay with the pain. Coming into the place of the other person and see their suffering. When we cannot stand the pain of anger, we want to quickly discharge it by being angry indiscriminately. That creates new problems. Anger needs to be expressed to the specific relationship, although not necessarily in the presence of the other person. People can clear with e.g. their parents, after they have died.
3)Integration: Forgiveness means that the person involved is allowed to stay and integrate. It means the death of an event or a role we had to play. It releases of love forward, so that it can be received. Expression needs to be focused to the right person, but it does not need to happen in their presence. Sometimes people clear anger towards their parents after they have died. It can mean setting boundaries.
4)Nurturing: The love, or the creativity, or the strength that was being locked up is now released. We can now nurture this relationship and see what the free flow will release. It can be more growth in our lives. Amplifying and cherishing growth is filling up the gaps with our own essence.
Into the future
Some of the things we covered are very easy and natural to implement and others might feel awkward in the beginning.
Take them with you as guides and reminders in the background. They mature and integrate in your life at their own pace. The most important message is that there is a very intimate and loving relationship between you and your life with the seasons.
Life needs you to happen. Choose some practices that make you happy and do them consistently.
Trust your unconscious mind to work for you.
Other Spring issues are:
Change: We need to be ready to change everything except our orientation to nurturing life. We need to be extremely flexible with our ideas, opinions, behaviours.
The setting of boundaries: It is often a surprise to us that when we ask for space to expand in a positive way, people are glad to support us. Remember to ask for space.
Visualising: Very powerful, especially when emotionally loaded and in sync with one’s deeper needs and longings. Healers know how to tune into the creative force and release it, by visualising that which wants to happen. When you understand that the things you take for granted happen automatically, you know that your unconscious mind is shaping your life. Visualising what you really long for congruently, consistently and with enthusiasm makes you take it for granted.
When you live with the seasons you discover ever deepening dimentions of yourself and the world.