THE SEAT OF THE SOUL

(Gary Zukav)

EXCERPTS:

· The incarnation of a soul is a massive reduction of the power of the soul to a scale that is appropriate to a physical form.

· The personality is those parts of the soul that require healing, along with those parts of the soul - such as compassion and love - that the soul has lent to the process of healing in that lifetime. The splintered aspects of the soul, the aspects that require healing, need to interact in physical matter so that each part of the splinteredness can become whole. The personality is like a complex mandala that is formed from these splintered parts in addition to the parts that are not splintered. It comes directly from the parts of the soul that the soul has chosen to work on in this lifetime to heal, that need to experience physical matter, and those parts that the soul has given to the process of healing in which you are involved. Therefore, you can see within a person's personality the splintered suffering of the soul from which it was formed, as well as the grace that the soul has earned, which is the loving part of the personality.

· The personality sometimes appears as a force running rampant in the world with no attachment to the energy of its soul. It is the result of the personality being unable to find its reference point, or connection, to its mothership, which is its soul. The conflicts of a human's life are directly proportional to the distance at which an energy of personality exists separately from the soul. When a personality is in full balance, you cannot see where it ends and the soul begins. That is a whole human being.

· Process is honoured in reverence. The unfolding of Life, the maturation process, the process of growing through and coming into your own empowerment, is a process that needs to be approached with reverence.

The cycles of Life need to be approached with reverence. They have been in place for billions of years. They are the reflection of the natural breathing of the soul of Gaia itself, the Earth consciousness, as it moves its force fields and guides the cycles of Life.

· To the five-sensory personality, intuitive insights, or hunches, occur unpredictably, and cannot be counted upon. To the multi-sensory personality, intuitive insights are registrations within its consciousness of a loving guidance that is continually assisting and supporting its growth. Therefore, the multi-sensory personality strives to increase its awareness of this guidance.

The first step to this is becoming aware of what you are feeling. Following your feelings will lead you to their source. Only through emotions can you encounter the force field of your own soul. That is the human passage in a word.

· All of the energy of the soul does not incarnate, the soul creates a personality from those parts of itself that it wants to heal in the physical environment, and from those parts of itself that it lends to the process of healing in that lifetime. So powerful is the energy of the soul that it could not advance into a physical form without, literally, exploding that form. In the creation of a personality, the soul calibrates parts of itself, reduces parts of itself, to take on the human experience. Your higher self is that aspect of your soul that is in you, but it is not the fullness of your soul. It is a smaller soul self. Therefore, "higher self" is another term for "soul", yet the soul is more than the higher self.

· Techniques to engage and discipline the intuition:

¨ Honour emotional cleansing at all times. Just as you dispose of your physical body wastes and toxins, clear yourself each day of your emotional impacts; e.g. by not going to bed in anger, by not residing in emotional contamination, and by learning to work with and to honour your emotional currents of energy.

¨ Follow a cleansing nutritional program.

¨ Honour the intuitive guidance received, whether you want to hear it or not.

¨ Allow yourself an orientation of openness towards yourself, your questions and the Universe.

· Intuition can permit the personality, through its higher self, to receive information from other souls of higher process, souls that are not its own soul. Sources of guidance other than your own higher self can come across on the same radio station, so to speak. This is not the same as an intuitive process. This is a process of receiving guidance through intuitive channels. Receiving information through intuitive channels is significantly different from receiving information through intuitive processes. Receiving information through intuitive processes is cooking at home. Receiving information through intuitive channels is ordering out.

· The personality is never separate from its soul, and the soul and its personalities are continually assisted and guided with impersonal compassion and wisdom.

· You are a system of Light, as are all beings. The frequency of your Light depends upon your consciousness. When you shift the level of your consciousness, you shift the frequency of your Light. If you choose to forgive someone who has wronged you, for example, rather than to hate that person, you shift the frequency of your Light. If you choose to feel affection, or kinship, with a person rather than distance or coldness, you shift the frequency of your Light.

Emotions are currents of energy with different frequencies. Emotions that we think of as negative, such as hatred, envy, disdain and fear have a lower frequency, and less energy, than emotions that we think of as positive, such as affection, joy, love, and compassion. When you choose to replace a lower-frequency current of energy, such as anger, with a higher-frequency current, such as forgiveness, you raise the frequency of your Light. When you choose to allow higher-frequency currents of energy to run through your system, you experience more energy.

· If your thoughts are thoughts that draw low-frequency energy currents to you, your physical and emotional attitudes will deteriorate, and emotional or physical disease will follow, whereas thoughts that draw high-frequency energy currents to you create physical and emotional health.

· Each human soul has both guides and Teachers. A guide is not a Teacher. Guides are what might be thought of as experts in certain fields that are called in for consultation. If you are writing a book, for example, or creating a project, or organizing an event, a guide that has the quality of warmth, or creativity, or insight that you wish to incorporate into your work is available to you.

Teachers operate on a more personal plane of involvement, so to speak, although they are impersonal energies that we personalize, that we feel a personal relationship with. A nonphysical Teacher brings you ever closer to your soul. It draws your attention to the vertical path, and to the difference between the vertical path and the horizontal path.

The vertical path is the path of awareness. It is the path of consciousness and conscious choice. The person who chooses to advance his or her spiritual growth, to cultivate awareness of his or her higher self, is on a vertical path. The vertical path is the path of clarity. The potential for the creation of clarity and the experience of interacting with your nonphysical Teacher are one and the same. The horizontal path is the path that satisfies your personality.

· Energy continually pours through you, entering at the top of your head and descending downward through your body. You are not a static system. You are a dynamic being of Light that at each moment informs the energy that flows through you. You do this with each thought, with each intention.

· The Light that flows through your system is Universal energy. It is the Light of the Universe. You give that Light form. What you feel, what you think, how you behave, what you value and how you live your life reflects the way that you are shaping the Light that is flowing through you. They are the thought forms, the feeling forms and the action forms that you have given to Light. They reflect the configuration of your personality, your space-time being.

INTENTION and CONTROL:

· We learn about intentions and their effects through our experiences in physical reality, but learning that intentions produce specific effects, and what those effects are, proceeds slowly when our learning must be done solely through the density of physical matter.

· We come to understand that it is the orientation of anger on our part, the intention of hostility and distance and not this particular action or that, which produces the effect that we do not want.

· Without an awareness of our emotions, we cannot associate the effects of anger, sadness, grief and joy - within ourselves or others - with their causes. We cannot distinguish between that part of us which is personality and that part of us which is soul. Without an awareness of our feelings we cannot experience compassion. How can we share the sufferings and the joys of others if we cannot experience our own? If we are not intimate with our emotions, we cannot perceive the dynamics that lie behind emotions, the way that these dynamics work, and the ends that they serve.

· Emotions reflect intentions. Therefore, awareness of emotions leads to awareness of intentions. Every discrepancy between a conscious intention and the emotions that accompany it points directly to a splintered aspect of the self that requires healing.

· The reality of each individual is created by his or her intentions and the intentions of others. What we think of as a physical reality that we share is an intermingling, or a formation, a massive overlay of appropriate realities. It is a fluid massive consciousness in which each of us exists independently of each other and yet coexists interdependently with each other.

· Your intentions create the reality that you experience.

· The healing journey of the human soul through its incarnations into the physical arena is a process of cycles of creation:

Karma®personality®intentions + Energy ®experiences®reactions®Karma® etc

The karma of the soul determines the characteristics of the personality. It determines the physical, emotional, psychological and spiritual circumstances into which the personality is born. It determines the ways that the personality is prone to understand its experiences. It determines the intentions with which the personality will shape its reality. These intentions create the reality that provides the soul, at each moment, with the experiences that are necessary for the balancing of its energy, and the personality with the clearest choice between learning through wisdom or learning through doubt and fear. Through these intentions the personality shapes the Light that is flowing through it into the reality that is optimal for its growth, for the evolution of its soul.

The reactions of the personality to the experiences that it has created creates more karma. Reactions express intentions. They determine the experiences that will be created next, and the reactions of the personality to those experiences create more karma, and so forth, until the soul releases that personality and body.

When the soul returns to its home, what has been accumulated in that lifetime is assessed with the loving assistance of its Teachers and guides. The new lessons that have emerged to be learned, the new karmic obligations that must be paid, are seen. The experiences of the incarnation just completed are reviewed in the fullness of understanding. Its mysteries are mysteries no more. Their causes, their reasons, and their contributions to the evolution of the soul, and to the evolution of the souls with whom the soul shared its life, are revealed. What has been balanced, what has been learned, brings the soul ever closer to its healing, to its integration and wholeness.

If the soul sees that it is necessary, it will choose, also with the help of its Teachers and guides, another incarnation; it will draw to itself the guides and Teachers that are appropriate to what it seeks to accomplish. It will consult with other souls whose evolution, like its own, will be mutually served by interactions within the physical arena. Then it will undertake again the massive, voluntary reduction of its energy, the infusion of its energy into matter, the calibration of its energy to an appropriate scale and range of frequencies, that is an incarnation into the learning environment of the Earth school, and the process begins again.

· If you choose to focus your attention on the strengths of others, on the virtues of others, on that part of others that strives for the highest, you run through your system the higher-frequency currents of appreciation, acceptance and love. Your energy and influence radiate instantaneously from soul to soul. You become an effective instrument of constructive change. If your intention is to align your personality with your soul, and if you focus your attention upon those perceptions that bring to you in each situation the highest-frequency currents of energy, you move toward authentic empowerment. You draw to yourself other souls of like frequency, and with them you create, through your intentions and your actions and your interactions, a compassionate world.

· The creation of physical experience through intention, the infusion of Light into form, energy into matter, soul into body, are all the same. The distance between you and your understanding of the creation of matter from energy is equal to the distance that exists between the awareness of your personality and the energy of your soul. The dynamic of soul and personality is the same dynamic as energy converted into matter. The system is identical. Your body is your conscious matter. Your personality is the energy of your soul converted to matter. If it is unaware, it is the splinteredness that is transmitted. If it is aware, it begins to become whole.

· You cannot choose your intentions consciously until you become conscious of each of the different aspects of yourself. As you become conscious of the different parts of your personality, you become able to experience consciously the forces within you that compete for expression, that lay claim to the single intention that will be yours at each moment, that will shape your reality. When you enter these dynamics consciously, you create for yourself the ability to choose consciously among the forces within you, to choose where and how you will focus your energy. The choice not to choose is the choice to remain unconscious and, therefore, to wield power irresponsibly.

· Only through responsible choice can you choose consciously to cultivate and nourish the needs of your soul, and to challenge and release the wants of your personality. This is the choice of clarity and wisdom, the choice of conscious transformation. It is the choice of the higher-frequency energy currents of love, forgiveness and compassion. It is the choice to follow the voice of your higher self, your soul. It is the decision to open yourself to the guidance and assistance of your guides and Teachers. It is the path that leads consciously to authentic power.

· Your responses to the struggles between the conflicting aspects of yourself determine the way that you will evolve, consciously or unconsciously, through the experience of negative karma or positive, through fear and doubt or through wisdom.

· You will be able to bring to bear upon your decision an awareness of what lies behind each choice, and the consequences of each choice, and choose accordingly.

· The effort that you apply to each decision to align yourself with your soul is rewarded many times. The part of yourself that reaches toward Light may not be the strongest part of you at the moment that you choose to journey toward authentic power consciously, at the moment that you choose the vertical path, but it is the part that the Universe backs.

· Temptation is a thought form that is designed to draw possible negativity from the human energy system without harming others. The soul understands that. Left to its own device it would operate completely within the human energy system, without spilling over and contaminating the collective conscious.

· Temptation is the gracious way of introducing each soul to his or her power. When you are seduced or threatened by external circumstances, you lose power. They gain power over you. With each choice you make to align yourself with the energy of your soul, you empower yourself. This is how authentic power is acquired. It is built up step by step, choice by choice. It cannot be meditated or prayed into being. It must be earned.

ADDICTION:

· Acknowledging an addiction, accepting that you have an addiction, is acknowledgment that a part of you is out of control. The personality resists acknowledging its addictions because that forces it to choose to leave a part of itself out of control, or to do something about it. Once an addiction has been acknowledged, it cannot be ignored, and it cannot be released without changing your life, without changing your self-image, without changing your entire perceptual and conceptual framework. We do not want to do that because it is our nature to resist change. Therefore, we resist acknowledging our addictions.

· Recognize that what you are doing when you fear that you will be tempted, and that you will not be able to resist the temptation, is creating a situation that will give you permission to act irresponsibly. Is it possible to create a test that you cannot pass? Yes. The experience of wanting to be tempted in order to test yourself is the act of creating an opportunity to act irresponsibly, to say to yourself, "I knew I couldn't do it, anyway," and give in to your addiction. The heart of making a temptation that is greater than you can resist is that you do not wish to be held responsible for your choice.

· This is the way out of an addiction: Walk yourself through your reality step by step. Make yourself aware of the consequences of your decisions, and choose accordingly. When you feel in yourself the addictive attraction of sex, or alcohol, or drugs, or anything else, remember these words: You stand between the two worlds of your lesser self and your full self. Your lesser self is tempting and powerful because it is not as responsible and not as loving and not as disciplined, so it calls you. This other part of you is whole and more responsible and more caring and more empowered, but it demands of you the way of the enlightened spirit: conscious life. Conscious life. The other choice is unconscious permission to act without consciousness.

· When you challenge an addiction, and choose to become whole, you align yourself with your nonphysical help. The work to be done is yours, but assistance is always there for you. The nonphysical world, the actions of your guides and Teachers, touches yours in many ways - the thought that brings power, the memory that reminds, the surprise occurrence that reinforces.

RELATIONSHIP:

· Without commitment you cannot learn to care for another person more than yourself, nor learn to value the growth of strength and clarity in another soul, even if that threatens the wants of your personality. When you release the wants of your personality in order to accommodate and encourage another's growth, you attune yourself to that person's soul. Without commitment, you cannot learn to see others as your soul sees them - as beautiful and powerful spirits of Light.

· You learn the roles of love and commitment and trust in making your partnership work. You learn that love alone is not enough, that without trust, you are not able to give and to receive the love that both of you have for each other. You learn that your commitment must be translated into a form that satisfies the needs of both you and your partner. You learn to value the needs of your partner as much as you value your own, because the partnership that you both want requires two healthy and inwardly secure individuals.

· You learn that sharing your concerns with consideration and the intention to heal and trust in the process is the only appropriate avenue. As you approach your needs with courage instead of fear you ignite a sense of trust. The true human condition in its most perfect form has no secrets. It does not hide, but exists in clear love.

· Individuals who experience what might be thought of as a martyr attitude see themselves as giving all that they have to others. They see this as a form of loving, but in truth the love that they give is contaminated because it is so filled with sorrow for themselves. A sense of guilt and powerlessness clouds the energy from their hearts and so when their affection is felt by another it does not feel good, actually. It feels somehow thick with need, yet the need is never articulated, so their love feels like cement pulling you.

· Each interaction with each individual is part of a continual learning dynamic. When you interact with another, an illusion is part of this dynamic. This illusion allows each soul to perceive what it needs to understand in order to heal. It creates, like a living picture show, the situations that are necessary to bring into wholeness the aspects of each soul that require healing.

The illusion is a learning vehicle. It is of the personality. You will leave the illusion behind when you die, when you return home. Yet a personality that lives in love and Light, that sees through the eyes of its soul, metaphorically speaking, can see the illusion and simultaneously not be drawn into it. This is an authentically empowered personality.

The illusion is exquisitely intimate to the needs of each soul. Always each situation serves each person involved. You cannot, and will not, encounter a circumstance, or a single moment, that does not serve directly and immediately the need of your soul to heal, to come into wholeness. The illusion for each soul is created by its intentions.

· Trust allows you to laugh. You can just as easily laugh and play while you grow as become serious and overwhelmed. Spiritual partners see from the perspective of the impersonal, and they help each other see from that perspective the meaning of their experiences. They can laugh at the richness and the beauty and the playfulness of the Universe. They enjoy each other. They see the frustrations of the wants of the personality for what they are, learnings, sometimes great learnings, for the soul.

HUMILITY:

· An authentically empowered person is humble, A humble spirit walks a familiar world. People are not strangers to it; they are its companions upon the Earth. A humble spirit does not ask for more than it needs, and what it needs, the Universe provides. A humble spirit is content with the fulfillment of its authentic needs, and is not burdened with artificial needs. Humble spirits are free to love and to be who they are. They have no artificial standards to live up to. They are not drawn to the symbols of external power. They do not compete for external power. This does not mean that they do not take pride in what they can do well, or that they do not focus their efforts to produce the best that they can, or are not spurred onward by their fellow humans when that is appropriate to the situation.

OTHER:

v Power is energy that is formed by the intentions of the soul. It is Light shaped by the intentions of love and compassion guided by wisdom. It is energy that is focused and directed toward the fulfillment of the tasks of the soul upon the Earth, and the development of the personality as a physical instrument of the soul that is appropriate to those tasks. It is the force that shapes the illusion into the images of the souls that are creating it, and not those of their personalities.

v Regret is the double negativity of clinging to negativity. You lose power when you regret. If one person grieves at his or her experiences while another is able to laugh, who is the lighter? Which is harmless? The heart that dances is the innocent heart. The one that cannot laugh is burdened. It is the dancing heart that is harmless. This does not mean that you do not learn from what you have experienced, and apply that in each moment as you make your decisions. That is responsible choice.

v Clarity is the perception of wisdom. It is seeing with wisdom. It is being able to perceive and understand the illusion, and to let it play.

v The impulse of creation and power authentic – the hourglass point between energy and matter; that is the seat of the soul.

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