DAILY How do we give ourselves a fighting chance when the deck is stacked? How do we change someone who overwhelms the psyche? How do we fight constipated bonfires of rage, destruction, and carelessness?
As usual, I have no idea, but in order to change something we must alter the energy that creates it. Therefore all seemingly enormous forces outside of self must first be addressed within. It is an opportunity to see them as part of our makeup, a mask of our mysterious spiritual-soul self.
Caroline Myss, author and intuitive healer, speaks of universal archetypes, as did Carl Jung, who proposed that the collective unconscious was populated by faces of psychological patterns, such as victim, mother, trickster, or Queen. Myss feels that a combination of 12 archetypal patterns, much like the 12 houses of the zodiac, work within each of us, creating personae and personality, mainly creating shadow material from childhood as grist for our adult spiritual mill.
Learning to identify these faces, or energies, observing them rise up again and again to sabotage the creative self, we begin to have a fighting chance to overcome a stacked deck. As we open perception to name our hidden subversive powers, be it contracts with the saboteur, prostitute, or innocent, we can then “invoke it, assimilate it, and express it.” * What overwhelms the psyche, is us. As Pogo once said, “We have met the enemy and he is us.”
We change us by awakening our own divine potential, liberating ourselves from childhood/societal limitations of old parental decrees. These shadow-archetypes, destructive when hidden by darkness, become our strongest ally’s when illuminated. The spiritual challenge is not to fight the constipated bonfire, first we let go the ‘old shit,’ and second, we do not sit so close to the fire that we cannot roast marshmallows. Standing back, observing, letting the all too personal become objectified into an identifiable archetype, someone well known, if not loved, is the business that serves us now, These are energies that made a contract to be with us, to expand our spiritual consciousness, to further our divinity.
*Sacred Contracts, Awakening Your Divine Potential by Caroline Myss
Asana: Ardha Chandrasana/Half Moon Pose- with ‘standing hand’ to the heart. You can come into Ardha many ways, one from a straight standing leg, lifting torso up and over, bringing R arm to the floor under shoulder, opening torso toward the sky, elongating L leg back. Or you can move into it from Utthita Parsvakonasana/side angle stretch, coming in from under to rise up on straight standing leg. Either way, continue revolving upward as you ground L foot down into the earth.
Health Notes: Along with many other standing poses, Ardha cures gastric problems. It also, strengthens legs, tones the spine, and helps with balance, especially when done with one hand to the heart.
Astrology Notes: Cancer, ruled by the Moon influences the stomach, the emotional body, women, moms, and nurturing. If only Cancers could stop worrying they would have the world by the tail. One of their archetypes might be a hoarder, or a ‘supply & demand Sargeant,’ a super-mom, a psychic-sponge. They tend to be passive on the surface of their waters and very active underneath. Ardha is a wonderful Cancer Pose for it makes one stand strong on their own feet, feel into their own open body, and not worry about someone else.
Ayurvedic Notes: Digestion is a big Cancer issue, as well as a Pitta imbalance, especially with summer heat increasing. The first key to prevent indigestion is to build digestive fires: 1, consume more ginger, in any and all forms. 2. Use Bay Leaf, either in food or as a tea. 3. Before eating make a mix of ¼ tsp. garlic powder, ½ tsp trikatu, (an equal mix of ginger, pepper, and Indian long pepper) 4. An easier herbal mix to take before meals is: 1 clove garlic, chopped, ¼ tsp cumin, pinch of rock salt, pinch of trikatu, 1 tsp lime juice
Short fasts help digestion enormously by giving the system a rest. Drink water and juices, with an added pinch of ginger, and or black pepper.
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