PAN International 72
PAN
International Edition,
Editorial Director:
This PAN emerges in the magic gap between summer and autumn, heralding the Autumn Equinox and the entrance of the Sun in the sign of Libra. This is a turning point in the cycle of the zodiac. Here the individual moves beyond the personal focus and expands in the collective order, creating partnerships and balanced rapports between polarities. Among all the signs Libra is the one most commonly associated with the realm of relationships. The genuine Libra drive seeks to bring the opposite poles together, releasing the identification with any of them and promoting the creation of sacred relationships.
There are many elements in astrology that can indicate the potential for significant relationships, which involve either meeting new partners or deepening the rapport with existing ones. For example, transits of Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune and Pluto on the natal Venus, the Descendant or the entire seventh house, have usually relevant impact in the sphere of relationships, though their effects vary considerably. In general terms the entrance of the Sun in Libra and the whole autumnal season is a particular fertile ground for relationships, especially when the conscious intent of such connections is healing, forgiveness and unconditional love.
This autumnal season is abundant with new healing workshops and courses, such as the Sacred Relationships Intensive: Restoring the Fragmented Heart in Ostra (Italy) from 28 September - 3 October 2007 and the One Year Course in Astroshamanism and Experiential Astrology with introductory workshops in Edinburgh (Scotland), 13-14 October, Frankfurt (Germany), 27-28 October, and Oviedo (Spain), 17-18 November. Other relevant seminars are taking place in
May this Libra cycle bestow upon each one of us its gifts of harmony, beauty, grace and balance in all our relationships, past, present and future.
Ego: The Bogus Identity by
The term ego comes from the Latin word meaning I and refers to the awareness of one’s separate identity. In most modern English dictionaries the ego is defined as “the self, especially as distinct from the world and other selves”. Despite its general negative connotations, due to its association with terms such as egoism and egocentric it is still meant as the I and whoever or whatever is generally understood as being our own individual identity. The ego is basically our sense of individuality, the belief of being an autonomous unit and of existing in a separated reality, which is the Human Arbitrary Configuration.
Since the separation took over all healing and mystery traditions have provided tools aimed at releasing the identification with the ego and acknowledging our true nature as undivided Self.
The Sicilian and Greek shaman-philosopher Empedocles, who first identified the four elements, considered a divine self alien to the physical separated identification with the body and longing to return to its original unity with God. The Gnostics called this split lower self the eidolon, which means “image” and is what human beings appear to be. The eidolon is the false self, the astral bogus double, which is ceremonially released with the crucifixion. The Roman philosopher Plotinus calls it the “intruder”, while the Syrian Gnostic Basilides defines it as the “parasitic psyche”. The eidolon, from which the word “idea” comes from, is the identification with the ego and the related idea of being the physical body, rather than the Consciousness which has produced the idea itself.
All healing mystery paths of initiation involve realizing that we are not the ego and retrieving the complete awareness of our authentic nature. This is astroshamanically described as the shift of identification from the periphery of the
According to Gnosticism, the Demiurge, the fashioner of the divorced lower world of manifestation and chief of its rulers (archons), epitomizes the ego and the realm of separation. He is the originator of evil and cosmic imperfection. Hence the real God is not the creator of the cosmos, it is the Demiurge. The early Christians associated the Demiurge with the Old Testament’s Jehovah and his capricious, vengeful and jealous nature. This defective god created a world based on his own flawed image and removed from the essential wholeness of which he was an expression. Like the ego, he is mislaid by his personal whims of being the absolute power and knowing everything about life. Yet, although the Demiurge appears inadequate and foolish, he is not wicked. Evil is the result of his forlorn attempt to deal with the cluttered reality he has generated. The Function of the initiation process, far from promoting antagonism with the Demiurge, is to release the perception of separation and unveil the reality of unity, or bring together the Lower with the Higher Self. As the Gnostic master Valentinus writes: “When the human self and the divine ‘I’ are interconnected they can achieve perfection and eternity.”[ii]
On the psychic level of initiation, the Demiurge emerges as the cause of all problems that thrive in our HAC dimension, whereas on the pneumatic level of initiation, he is a crucial tool in the path of transformation. “On the Christian way the psychic initiation is about progressively perfecting the eidolon – the self-image – by understanding the self as an integral part of the whole. The pneumatic initiation is about transcending the illusion of personal autonomy altogether and being Consciousness passively witnessing the unfolding Oneness, which includes all of ‘our’ thoughts and actions. When we do this, it is not that we discover we are just programmed automata with no free will. It is that there is no ‘us’ to be free or otherwise. There is the Mystery witnessing the Oneness.”[iii]
Healing initiation processes are not concerned with intellectual speculations. They are very pragmatic and deal with experiential factors which are generally overlooked in the clouds of complexities. We are the only one who can choose whether to employ the world in order to remain in a state of fear, where we are the victims of circumstances, or to consider it as a learning path to retrieve our memory and reach out for our true inheritance. To support the latter choice, there are different tools which in the end identify only one remedy: release, or forgiveness. Forgiveness is practiced “not because we are being
The ego is a false centre (as Osho puts it: click here for a discourse on the topic), a separate identity, based on fear and on an illusive perception of what we are. It is the belief in the reality of a separated and bogus self, made as substitute for our true multidimensional nature, “a symbol of impossibility; a choice for options that do not exist”, “nothingness, but in a form that seems like something” or “an evil dream that but seemed real while you were dreaming it” (ACIM, CT81). The ego deprives us of our natural ecstatic state of love, peace and bliss, creating an ongoing setting based on conflicts, grievances, fear and guilt. Yet since the ego is a hallucinatory state there is no point in fighting it. Being at war with the ego will only boost its illusory reality. As A Course in Miracles puts it: “I do not attack your ego. I do work with your higher mind, the home of the Holy Spirit, whether you are asleep or awake, just as your ego does with your lower mind, which is its home. I am your vigilance in this, because you are too confused to recognise your own hope. I am not mistaken. Your mind will elect to join with mine, and together we are invincible. You and your brother will yet come together in my name, and your sanity will be restored.”
The ego’s dream fades away by letting it go and looking at what is beyond the go, which is the process of forgiveness. In the next part of this article I will clarify the meaning of forgiveness and the basic structure of the ego. I will use references from A Course in Miracles, which I regard as a contemporary adaptation of the teachings of ancient Mystery Religions and Gnosticism. (to be continued).
Astroshamanism in
Friday we spent preparing, cooking and planning the schedules. It was a joy to see how the Italian-’Scottish’-Finnish mixture, culture and connection worked well. Eija and Franco babbled in Italian and I just loved hearing the music of this beautiful language and likewise sometimes Franco was intrigued by Eija’s and my Finnish; like shamanic language in his ears.
The workshop had attracted 14 participants plus Eija and I. Early Saturday morning, after greeting all animals, the group filled the drawing room in the main house with our chairs, blankets, cushions and a Findhorn Pottery sacred candle arrangement in the middle. The setting took me back to the many workshops I did at Findhorn, memories and gratitude filled me. The old house was breathing its ancient history (oldest parts from the 1600-century) and welcomed the group of inner seekers.
The two days of work were filled with grace, beauty, inner insights and connections. Both releasing grievances and receiving blessings; attentively the group learned the basics of Franco’s astroshamanic approach and made connections and parallels to Finland’s rich shamanic roots; ancestral treads going to the Sami people in Lapland and their shamanic tradition as well as treads to the ancient Siberian shamanic traditions. Also
Franco and I attuned well to each other’s rhythms as Franco talked and I translated to Finnish – a flow of two languages interchanging in harmony like music. Some participants mentioned this afterwards and found our collaboration fruitful, unobtrusive and good as it allowed them to deepen their understanding.
We learned to connect with our place of power, to work with our intentions and to ’feel’ into the energy matrix of our astrological maps. We attuned to our sun-sign, to our moon-sign and to our ascendant, receiving their blessings and their messages as well as releasing whatever is blocking our soul-purposes and our intentions. We did a basic ritual with the three phases of energizing, releasing and receiving. We also worked in pairs and gained insight into the collective nature of energies.
In-between the session’s participants connected with the landscape and all the animals. Gaia the little poodle became everyone’s treasure and participated in most of the sessions, bringing the animal kingdom ever so present in our work. All the cats had gone into hiding, but on Sunday I could observe how Maya, one of the older cats, inspected the drawing room whilst we were on lunch.
Franco’s undivided presence and gentle being received a lot of thanks from the participants. The way he held the workshop, including the surrounding and the atmosphere of Mellangard was highly appreciated and we wish we can invite him again one day. An extra blessing came as we looked at the group photos afterwards. Spirit entities of rare beauty, round symbolic entities, like bubbles, appear on the photos in and around the group.
In the photo I have included only part of the group is present, some participants had already left for their long journey home when we took this picture.
In gratitude….Micaela
Orbs: there are many theories and ideas regarding orbs, such as those appeared in the pictures of the workshop in
Restoring the Fragmented Heart: The Way of Sacred Relationships – Part Two
In the previous article we identified two types of relationships: scared and sacred relationship. Scared relationships are strictly based on the belief in separation and the fear to step out of the human separated paradigm, or Human Arbitrary Configuration (HAC), whereas sacred relationships aim at releasing fear and separation, reawakening true perception and the multidimensional nature of life. As a matter of fact in scared relationships, the term relationships is merely an euphemism, since their purpose is to prevent any relationship and to support the fear of relationships themselves. The partner is just a cover-up to keep away from our true multidimensional nature and preserve soul fragmentation. A scared relationship is a desperate surrogate of the relationship with the web of life, a bogus dreamland with an inevitable date of expiry and a tragic handover of souls, which serves an educational purpose as long as the initiatory learning is not delayed.
“The feminine soul is cast out and projected from its human male form when a man falls in love with a woman. This process is reversed when a woman falls in love with a man. When humans fall in love with the person most closely replicating their own inner self at the time, souls fly out of their bodies with all pandemonium breaking loose. On the spiritual plane, romance is a sacred intersection of astral and material dimensions… an initiation for awakening soul-consciousness in the human form ensues. The fundamental disorientation of Humans Falling In Love is a combination of inter-dimensional collision and a genuine out-of-body experience.” [iv]
“Human personalities” as Antero Alli puts it “discover their spiritual nature in many ways, one of which is by throwing their souls away. This is only natural, as hearts grow fonder in absence. The fatal element of romance emerges when humans-in-love realize how much they miss their souls, after throwing them out, while convinced they are missing their human other… the target of their projections.”
Scared relationships, or special relationships, as A Course in Miracles call them are “based on differences, where each one thinks the other has what he has not. “They come together, each to complete himself and rob the other. They stay until they think that there is nothing left to steal, and then move on. And so they wander through a world of strangers, unlike themselves, living with their bodies perhaps under a common roof and yet a world apart.”[v] Such relationships focus upon holding grievances. They maintain that, if you met that ideal him or he, if she or he spoke or acted differently, if certain outer circumstances or events were changed, the ideal relationship would be possible. The source of the relationship is constantly perceived as being outside and this produces the inevitable and ongoing fear that this source may be lost or abandoned.
Sacred relationships have a different foundation. “Each one has looked within and seen no lack. Accepting his completion, he would extend it by joining with another, whole as himself. He sees no difference between these selves, for differences are only of the body. Therefore, he looks on nothing he would take. He denies not his own reality because it is the truth. Just under Heaven does he stand, but close enough not to return to earth.”[vi]
A sacred relationship is learning to be the source of love rather than waiting for others to be the source. When I deny any part of me or others, I cannot reach the Core Multidimensional Identity, or God, Spirit, etc, for this Core is the place where all parts meet. Hence the path to the Core involves the acceptance of whoever and whatever exists. In a sacred relationship the partner becomes a holy mirror, who allows you to see who you are. It is a path of forgiveness. Forgiveness for myself, for all the aspects I do not like in me. Forgiveness for others, for whatever I do not like in them. As I forgive, I pave the way to the Core. The Core is ultimately reached when I become capable to comprise all, nothingness included.
All those we meet in our life are projected components of the wholeness from which we have separated myself, and every single relationship is a path to that wholeness. Here it is a question of pragmatically accepting with no reservation that “your partner is doing exactly what your energies, unconscious though they may be, are manipulating the partner into doing or saying. And you have to take full responsibility of this without saying, ‘Well, hey - Come on. He’s doing something too.’ What he’s doing in his movie, in his reality experience, doesn’t make any difference. It’s what he’s doing in your movie that carries the message from your Shadow. You have to begin by taking 100 percent responsibility for that - not 50 per cent or half and half - or the insight will never come. Only when you do take full responsibility (without any blame) for your partner’s behavior, for your partner’s speech and actions, only then are you in the place of power where you can begin to experience the manipulation of your partner by your Shadow side. You can then begin to bring the energy back to live comfortably in your own life. Then it no longer has to manipulate your partner into getting its messages to you or doing whatever it is that may be causing the problems between you, causing the barriers or the feelings of separation”.[vii]
The sole reality of the universe is unity and, although according to the hallucination of separation I appear as split, I am inevitably connected with whoever and whatever I perceive by a web of projections. Those on whom I project my fragmented parts, do the same with theirs. However, no one is able to understand how he receives the projections of others until he has had a complete experience of how his projections manipulate the lives of other people. I am the only inhabitant of my mind and all I perceive outside is just a part of that mind.
The forthcoming workshop Sacred Relationships Intensive: Restoring the Fragmented Heart in Ostra (
The Rib of Eve: Men and Women in
Ana and Chema, a most inspiring Spanish couple, have recently created two healing associations in
I am going to tell you how the idea of creating the Asociación "Mujeres por el Bienestar y Desarrollo Personal" (Women for Personal Development and Wellbeing) started. After meeting with a group of women for several months in various healing workshops, we decided to create an association aimed at continuing our work together, also giving the opportunity to other women to join. The intent is to retrieve our power by healing various aspects of our life (physical, mental, sexual, spiritual, etc.). The idea is to organize healing courses, exploring different therapeutic approaches and also activities promoting harmony between men and women, together with talks and other events. The setting of this association is the Principado de Asturias, and we have already representatives in various areas:
The asociación "Hombres por el Bienestar y Desarrollo Personal" (Men for Personal Development and Wellbeing) was born the other way around of Genesis, i.e. from Eve’s rib. It is the result of five men connecting with the intentions and tools defined by the association of women. Considering the frustrations experienced in associations of mixed gender, we decided to manifest a new project: creating an association of men, totally identical to the association of women (including agreements and official regulations), yet with the autonomy to take decisions on its own. Although the gender perspective is different, the intent is the same: to grow together in whole well-being. An element of difference is that our development as men has to go together with that of women, releasing situations of inequality and abuse. We have decided to be a rib of women, acknowledging their growth and sharing ours, promoting initiatives for both associations or just for ours. Two associations which work in firm co-operation, while preserving their own identity. Chema.
[i] All times in PAN are given in
[ii] Quoted in Timothy Freke & Peter Gandy, The Jesus Mysteries: Was the Original Jesus a Pagan God?, Thorsons, p. 136.
[iii] Timothy Freke & Peter Gandy, Jesus and the Goddess: the Secret Teachings of the Original Christians, Thorsons, p. 245.
[iv] Antero Alli, Angel Tech: A Modern Shaman’s Guide to Reality Selection, New Falcon Publications, Scottsdale, Arizona, USA, p. 131
[v] A Course in Miracles, Text, p. 467.
[vi] A Course in Miracles, Text, p. 467.
[vii] Edwin C. Steinbrecher, The Inner Guide Meditation: A Transformational Journey to Enlightenment and Awareness, Aquarian Press, p. 139.
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