On Life, Heart Mind, and Life After Life
This Journal entry introduces the subject of Life After Life, and includes additional information about Heart Mind, and so it’s a Journal about Life. Life after Life is generally regarded by the intentionally unconscious (those who know that they don’t know and want to keep it that way), and the unconsciously unconscious (those who don’t know that they don’t know), as an inscrutable subject to be avoided, if not actively resisted. Such avoidance is purely fear based.
We all encounter the day when we undergo the transition from life in the body to no life in the body, followed by life in higher dimensional planes of Light. This event is a universal and important event in the life of human beings. The other universal and important event in the life of humans is birth. What goes on in our lives between these 2 events should be a developmental process of knowing what our life is all about.
It seems that a lot of schools of thought and persuasions have arisen to help us figure out how to manage our lives between birth and death. Many of these schools of propaganda further the excuse for their existence by continuing to inform us about the shadowy unknown and imponderable aspects that are generally ascribed to death. We might wind up in Hell, for instance. This doesn’t sound so good, but at least it is a concession that there is some from of life after life.
Such teachings, now millennia old, drive a certain fear of death, and the schools continue through the centuries to harp on the theme of life and death with a vagueness that keeps the flock in check. Most of the unconscious will hang on to the school, continually tithing, with a dim hope that some enlightenment may arrive one day, and they can finally understand that it’s OK to die.
Before we give up the ghost, we might as well enjoy, benefit, and contribute our Light to the world while being alive in our human body.
Such entrainment to the thought constructs of these various schools of thought, which are outside of oneself, constitute what I refer to as listening to OPV, an acronym for Other Peoples’ Voices. The result of listening to OPV is a mishmash of noise that generally winds up running our left hemispheric thought processes and sounds like the ever familiar voice in our head that is who we think we really are.
This noise in our head has the makings of the Judge, the Critic, the Skeptic, the Pusher, and the Victim. Just listen in right about now, and see who is talking in your head space. Say hello to whoever is talking in your head, and see if you can get to know them a little bit. Then take it all the way home, and see if you can figure out where this voice came from. This OPV voice is not your authentic Self.
Observe it, gently let go of it, and forgive it, as best as you can from day to day. This is a type of mindfulness practice, if you will. You don’t have to beat up on OPV. OPV is actually natural, in consideration of where you have journeyed and who you have listened to. Later you learn about how correct boundaries are formed, a most important milestone in one’s life, and it usually develops in degrees.
The authentic You resides in the Quietness and Mysteries of the chambers of your Heart.
Humans are culturally entrained to cling to life, without even considering what drives this manner of learning about their life process. As long as we are so ardently clinging to life, we are promoting a shadow fear of our grand exit from this mortal plane.
The death and dying process perhaps should be more of a celebration of graduation to higher realms of Light and learning. Somehow, along the way in our daily lives, our instinctive and healthy survival instinct is transmuted into a psychic demon–the fear of death, and the fear of life as well.
The survival instinct is actually a healthy sign of an intact and healthy first chakra function. It is a primal instinct of any creature born into this world we call Earth. It is designed to alert us that we may be in some sort of danger, or that a threat is present. This is healthy utilitarian fear. On the other hand, the demon of the balanced first chakra zone of conscious and subconscious interface is a shadowy, paralyzing, dissociative, anxiety based type of fear.
Shadowy fear has many synonymous feeling states that we are able to register in our conscious mind as being present in our body and Brain Mind. For the sake of clarity, the next paragraph is a handy alphabetical listing of some of the feeling states of shadow fear.
As you read the listing, just check in with your inner world, and see if you remember feeling any of these states of late: anxious, apprehensive, cautious, clammy, cowardice, defensive, distrust, doubt, dread, embarrassed, evasive, foreboding, frantic, hesitant, horrified, hysterical, inhibited, insecure, irrational, nausea, nervous, panic, paralyzed, paranoid, scared, secretive, shaky, shy, skeptical, stage fright, superstitious, suspicious, tense, terrified, threatened, timid, trapped, uncertain, uneasy, vulnerable, want to escape, wary, and worry.
Well, how are you doing? If you are feeling alot of these states alot of the time in your daily world, then you have several issues to deal with: 1) balancing of your neurotransmitters (in this case, you probably need more GABA, gamma amino butyric acid, the calming neurotransmitter), 2) you are being informed in your conscious mind by reflexive trauma triggers from the past which are guilt/shame related. These traumas need some healing help, usually by employing the help of some type of trauma healer, and 3) you need to try to get a grip, and figure out what the shadow fear is trying to inform you about. With this type of fear, we can practice shifting it into the positive utilitarian healthy fear by asking a question, “What action is needed right now?”
The action needed in shadow fear falls into one of 2 categories, and often emotionally intelligent people can access both types of actions: 1) a boundary formation is necessary, as in the animal world of fight or flight. For humans, this means we have to access utilitarian anger (fight) or utilitarian apathy (flight, just walk away, or ignore the situation). Either of these actions will help you formulate a boundary as you delve deeper into a solution for the issue which presented itself.
2) you need to access a higher emotional frequency called desire (you have to know your passions, what you want, and how to protect this), and if your desire level is greater than your fear level, you will then access a still higher emotional frequency called courage, and you will then step right into the adventure.
As stated in a previous Journal dealing with the understanding of shadow and utilitarian emotional states, courage is not the absense of fear. Courage is moving on into the experience with dignity, despite having the fear. Until we start to practice accessing desire and courage, our shadow fear will usually self magnify, and evolve as a growing fear that grinds its way into our neural pathways and our psychic byways.
Fear is a gift that was designed by nature to alert us to the situation at hand, and energize us to be able to deal with the often stressful situation. On the other hand, as the list above indicates, we can also become paralyzed. Being so subverted, we return to the comfort zone, and we miss out on the great potential of the great adventure. We miss the opportunity to experience, practice, learn, and grow.
On the other hand, walking through the fear (access desire and courage), means that you will meet tests, challenges, and helpers. If the adventure is in alignment with your Heart based primary motivators, or passions, then the chance for success approaches 100%. The Universe, which wanted to know Herself through your Heart, will synchronistically shift to strengthen you and assist you through the journey. It is the Universe’s job to figure out out how to help you manifest your desire. We don’t really need to know how the Universe, or, Mind of God, does this. We just need to be near at-one-ment (atonement) with our Identity.
At this juncture of accomplishment, one is learning what neutrality and willingness are all about. These 2 emotional states are higher on the emotional frequency scale than courage. They equate to trust and release (neutrality), and optimism and intention (willingness). I suggest some practice of accessing your boundaries, your desire, and your courage by taking baby steps in this practice of navigating in your emotional toolbox. Walk into and through your fears, and allow Grace to assist. Carry the staffs of desire and courage with you. You will be aided and guided.
As with shadow fear, we can go through the synonymous feeling states of the 6 lower case emotions of apathy, grief, fear, desire, anger, and pride. These 6 states are informed by trauma (memoried guilt/shame) to manifest in our lives in the shadow. We can check in with how many states we feel, and upon discerning our level of feeling, we can then ask the approriate question for each of these shadow states, and thereby practice shifting into the positive utilitarian use of the emotion to help protect and heal our lives. From there we can practice accessing higher emotional tools of courage, neutrality, willingness, acceptance (forgiveness), etc.
In consideration of shadow fear, that being the kind of fear that drives our avoidance of the death topic (the variety of fear promoted by many life schools), we might start with a consideration of how such fear enters our lives early on, and what this primordial fear later leads to.
This type of fear is part and parcel of living a life on Earth plane, and it starts as a result of our first great illusion; an illusion that we begin to develop after the time of birth when we are pre-verbally learning what it feels like to be ourselves. We are a Consciousness living inside of a helpless blob of baby flesh which is dependent on “outside” resources to keep it warm, dry, and fed. The illusion that I am referring to is the illusion of separation.
As a parenthetical paragraph insert, this illusion of separation from all of Creation is what some schools of thought refer to as “Original Sin.” The concept of Original Sin is actually the concept fostered to promote guilt and shame in our lives, and to keep us well herded in the flock. I shall posit the philosophy that Original Sin is a term which masquerades for Original Bull. So, we are born into a kind of Original Bull, but there should be no shame or guilt about innocently stepping into a pile of crap.
You might come out smelling like a rose. Give yourself a fighting chance!
The illusion of separation leads to 4 types of OPV fear based thinking and response:
1) The fear of scarcity, or lack
2) The fear of not being good enough
3) The fear of rejection
4) The fear of loss of control
If these 4 OPV fears are running, all as a result of our operating from the illusion of separation, then the inevitable result is an endpoint feeling that I refer to as the “fear of death.”
Our Soul/Spirit knows coming into these Earth bodies that it is going to have to contend with this sense of feeling separate from everything for all of its days here. This is a pre-birth knowing, and this understanding is acceptable to our Consciousness. There will be a development in the body of the resultant companion of fear based consciousness. This is unavoidable in so much as we have to contend with the Illusion of Separation.
Fear furthers the illusion that we are separate from others, and all of Creation. In fact, nothing could be further from the truth. All of Creation lives inside of us, in our inner realms of Being, and is known in the Heart. The words of sages ring true, We are That.
Most people run their lives without any consideration given to the nature of their fears, and are generally engaging with life events on a reactive basis, letting life lead them around by the nose, so to speak. We could, instead, gain a little traction by understanding our fears, and perhaps take a more proactive approach to the life we want to create. It also helps to become familiar with OPV, and renounce it while forgiving it.
Unfortunately, in the vast majority of lives, the parenting is of such a quality that our fear based instincts become deeply imprinted into our neural circuitry up through the time of completion of the development of our subconscious mind, which is age 7 years. This is also the time period when the Heart chakra has fully developed, from age 4-7 years.
A balanced healthy Heart Mind has the capacity to give and receive love unconditionally. All of my earlier significant teachers were able to help me understand in one way or another that unconditional love is life’s most powerful healer. The ability to give and receive unconditional love is predicated on our level of self love, which is founded on our ability to forgive and be non judgmental towards self and other.
Before we leave these bodies that carry us through our Earth side life journey, the daily theme worth considering is what sort of sanctuary we are building in our Hearts, both the neuromuscular pumping heart, and the Heart that is the seat of the Mind.
This Heart Mind is 60% neural. These types of heart cells are neural cardiocytes. They are thinking, longing, knowing, and feeling. The neural cardiocytes do not think with words. They think in a fractal of nested knowing and connection to their Divine source. The Heart Mind transmits on an energetic spectrum to all the cells of the body, ranging from fight/flight energetic to resonant frequency to overwhelm/withdrawal energetic.
When we experience the resonant frequency of the Heart Mind, (easily displayed with biofeedback devices which record a spectral analysis of heart rate variability), we feel calm, can access higher emotional frequencies, have higher cognitive ability, higher intuitive ability, and we can entrain other hearts within our local vicinity, and beyond, into our calm resonant frequency.
Heart resonant frequency lies in the range of 0.08 cycles per second (Hertz) to 0.15 cps. Ususally people come in around 0.10 cps, and this value is regarded as Heart resonant frequency. This is easily measurable with biofeedback devices (see www.heartmath.org). I commonly use this measurement in my practice so that people can have a visual and cognitive understanding of their level of heart electromagnetic chaos (“foot on the gas” or “foot on the brake” or both, foot on the gas and foot on the brake, which is quite chaotic, and quite common).
“Foot on the gas” refers to dominance of Heart frequency by the Sympathetic Nervous System (SNS) division of the Autonomic nervous system. This division is sometimes called the “fight/flight” energetic. It provides a type of native intelligence to our life. The SNS serves to speed and contract organs.
“Foot on the brake” refers to dominance of the Heart frequency by the Parasympathetic Nervous System (PNS) division of the Autonomic nervous system. This division is sometimes refered to as the “freeze” energetic. It provides a type of native intelligence to our life. The PNS serves to slow and relax organs.
There can be dominance in the Heart and body by either SNS or PNS, or both simultaneously, hence the terminology of “foot on the gas and foot on the brake” occuring at the same time.
If a person lives in the SNS or “manic” state for a period of time, then an inevitable collapse into the PNS or “depressive” state may ensue. If this type of swing is continuously occuring, then we are dealing with a form of bipolarism.
We can discern the level of bipolarism of any of the 7 major chakra zones, a particular subject which is somewhat beyond the scope of this particular Journal entry.
In the state of balanced Heart energetic the SNS and the PNS have come together in the middle, so to speak, into a balanced repose of Heart Resonant Frequency, 0.1 cycles per second.
This resonant frequency is quite unlike the 2 ends of the Heart frequency spectrum of sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous system dominance. The 2 divisions of the autonomic nervous system, the sympathetic and the parasympathetic, are largely driven by fear based entrainment in those who have a significant amount of unresolved trauma memory reflex. These 2 divisions of our nervous system are running (informing) all of our cellular and organ functions. Their origin is in the subconscious mind. The conscious mind cannot process fast enough to run the myriad of processes that occur on a second to second basis in a human body.
When the sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous systems are operating in a balanced harmonic, then the Heart Mind, as stated above, is in its resonant frequency range of 0.08 to 0.15 cycles per second (Hertz). The resonant frequency of the heart is generally thought of as 0.1 cps, and this will vary somewhat from person to person.
When an individual is stimulated into a fear based memory reflex, the Heart Mind instantly shifts its frequency and informs the Brain Mind to signal all the cells of the body via the divisions of the Autonomic nervous system into a more chaotic energetic. This signaling arrives at the cell membrane (the real brain of the cell, since it is the sensing feeling unit of cellular function), and from there into the DNA, which encodes for cellular protein and subsequent function.
A timely reference to an important text is indicated. The text was written by a noted biochemist, Dr. Bruce Lipton, Ph.D., and is entitled The Biology of Belief, Unleashing the Power of Consciousness, Matter, and Miracles. Dr. Lipton is to be featured on the June 1, 2009 airing of PBS. This presentation will be eye opening for many, and will undoubtedly be shown again, or can be purchased from the PBS broadcasters. Bruce will be talking about how your subconscious beliefs govern your cellular chemistry. I would only throw in the Heart Mind energetic to complete the explanation.
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POSTSCRIPT INSERT- I saw this PBS show and Wayne Dyer mentioned very little of Dr. Lipton’s important work. Dyer calls the subconscious mind the “habitual mind.”
His contribution to helping many move into new realms of conscious thinking is noteworthy, and I applaud his traumatic life journey, recovery, and his dharmic based offerings. However, labeling the all important subconsciousness as a mere “habitual mind” simply is a weak and shallow descriptive. The profound enormity of the subconsciousness, and its connection to Superconsciousness, cannot be trivialized with a label such as “the habitual mind.” This descriptive is misinformation and is misleading.
Oh well, at least he mentioned Bruce’s book. Bruce Lipton is putting some biochemistry around the other important work that parallels and expands The Biology of Belief. I am referring to Rob Williams’ evolution and teaching of the Psych-K process (www.psych-K.com). I leave you to connect the dots. Forget about Dyer’s comment unless you just want to stay stuck in pure thought stuff that sounds/reads good enough to make you feel that you have gone deep enough. Not.
Perhaps I should delete the last 4 paragraphs from this Journal entry, but I shall not. They soundly register an important consideration. Thank you Dr. Dyer. My wife and I have enjoyed a number of your past offerings, and your choice of words (“habitual mind”) have rendered up some grist for this mill. I rather think that the conscious mind might be worthy of the label “habitual mind.”
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A natural inquiry may be, “What is the quality of energetic that your Heart is radiating into your body, and outside of your body? What is the quality of energetic that other Hearts around you are radiating?” Such inquiry can lead to deeper understanding of the effects promoted by OPV into our immediate field of influence, and into the magneto-sphere of Gaia, a subject of a future Journal entry.
Other Peoples’ Voices, masquerading as what we identify as our self, overrides the Heart Mind, and its messaging about our authentic Self. To perceive, and understand, this messaging requires a calming of the thought waves in the Brain Mind.
The Sanskrit words, from the second sutra of The Yoga Sutras of Patangali, are the words ”yoga chitti vritti nirodha” - the purpose of yoga is to still the thought waves of the mind. The knowing and mysteries of the Heart can be manifested and lived with less and less fear as we practice our yoga of living in the world via Resonant frequency and mindfulness (quiet mind).
Most people harbor a fear of the life event that is commonly called death. This word carries the connotation of finality, or, there is no more. The word “death” is a misnomer, because we don’t die. The body ceases, the Soul/Spirit live on. The word “death” has become such a handy word in our lexicon, that I suppose we will keep on using the word with the same degree of irreverence. However, the oft felt negative connotations which accompany the use of this word are not necessary.
It is the belief of most people on the planet that after the body functions cease, and there is no more life in the body, that an essence of life, known as Spirit, transitions and lives on in other realms. These life after life realms are generally regarded as an unknown to ordinary people, and such people get into their heads and advance an argument that one cannot know or prove anything about life after life. Such are the belief systems that people are running as a result of collective OPV.
As it turns out, there is an impressive assortment of literature addressing the subject of what goes on in life after life. In the next Journal entry I will offer an arrangement of types of literature on this worthy subject, and advance my feeling that all of these diverse forms of human insight are basically advancing a similar viewpoint.
It has come to my attention that the GOOP sages (see www.goop.com, and go to the BE page) have struck again with a consideration of why it is that we do addictions. I offered an explanation of the addiction quandary in my May 21st blog entitled “The Evil Tongue Quandary, Preamble III, The Five Levels of Competence.” I hope you will have a look and a read.
I still intend a conclusion to The Evil Tongue Quandary, and in that future memory, the source of our addictions quandary will also be addressed, as the 2 patterns arise from the same wounding pattern in our subconscious mind.
So far as the 2 GOOP site BE pages that I have studied, the Evil Tongue and the Addiction Quandaries, I like Cynthia Bourgeault’s responses the most. She seems to hit what I think of as the essence of each quandary. The other responses are also very good. In his response to the addiction process, Deepak makes a comment about the “left hand path.”
Known in the spiritual teachings of Indian sects as “bon marg,” the left hand path is a technique of indulging in the addiction until it is burned out. Unfortunately this technique only works well when applied by those with a strong spirit and set intention to burn out the addiction.
Otherwise, the technique further subverts one into the addictive process, and what we may wind up burning out is the body itself. Then we die into life after life, which is where this Journal entry began, in consideration of such ponderables.
Coming up next is a categorization of the various forms of literature and experience on the subject of Life After Life. I hope that it will help ease what native fears you may have about the death process, and bring you some peace.
Signing Off from Crestone and Beyond.
Love