Anodea Judith is a guest in the upcoming Evolver Learning Lab course,"Bioenergetic Healing Demystified: Techniques for Becoming a Spiritual Warrior." Reality Sandwich's Talat Jonathan Phillips hosts this 5-part live, interactive video course that covers the wide range of health and spiritual benefits available to you through the power of energy healing. Also joining Talat as guests will be Cyndi Dale, Richard Gordon, and Leslie Berman. It all starts on June 27.
As I begin this blog for Reality Sandwich, I’ll start with the question of reality itself. What is it, what is it made of, and how do we create it? Not that I or anyone else can precisely answer these questions, but the inquiry itself opens wider possibilities, a space into which we might create the miracle of a world we know is possible.
Reality is usually defined as whatever we experience in the present moment. If you just broke your leg or got dumped by a lover, your reality is intense pain. But that pain is only real to the person who is injured. A friend can sympathize, but it’s not their reality. They are sharing reality with you, but their experience is different.
Likewise, there is a popular belief that we create our own reality. If you tell yourself it’s a tough job market out there, do you increase the likelihood that you won’t get hired? And if so, is that a universal reality, or just your personal experience, like putting on purple glasses to experience a purple universe? And if we do create our own reality, why do we create messes in our lives?
Does reality dictate our behavior, or is it the other way around? Does a bad day make me cranky or does my attitude make for a bad day? If I’m rude to someone, does that invite their worst self to come forward? If I am pleasant, do I find the whole transaction more pleasant?
And what about collective reality? I might have created situations in my personal life, but did I create the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan? Did I create global warming, world hunger, environmental pollution, overpopulation? Did I create the birds and the bees, the mountains or the trees?
We also know reality changes. Our most esteemed spiritual traditions arose from a time when “reality” was vastly different than it is today. When the Buddha said that life was suffering, it really was suffering for most people, even for those who were well off. They didn’t do hip replacements in those days or have dentistry for toothaches. They hadn’t discovered antibiotics to combat illness and it was commonplace to lose loved ones in the prime of their lives.
Since the early yogis first withdrew their senses to find higher consciousness; since Buddha first practiced renunciation; since the early Christians retreated into monastaries; and since New Age spiritualism started talking about ascension, the arrow of our attention has been pointing upward, toward transcendence and detachment–saying that the realities of everyday life were not real–that only spirit was. Even the chakras have most often been seen as a ladder for liberation, a means toward an end: to transcend mundane reality.
And what has all this upward spiritual pursuit gotten us? Do we have better command of the reality around us? Are we more effective in our lives? Have we been able to prevent genocide, ecocide, pesticide, herbicide, and collective suicide? Are we becoming an enlightened civilization? I would argue that higher consciousness contributes to these causes, but it takes something more than that to actually create a new world.
In order to create a new reality and tackle the seemingly insurmountable challenges facing us on this planet, you and I need to become master manifestors of miraculous vision. This is an evolutionary turn-around, an about-face from the upwardly mobile trajectory we have been faithfully following for the last few thousand years.
We have entered a time in the evolutionary journey where humans are being asked to consciously co-create our collective reality. It’s time to harvest that higher consciousness we have been seeking for so long and turn it back downward, toward the earth and our bodies, toward the mundane and the finite and learn how to bring our lofty visions down to earth. The Hero’s Quest has been to move outward, but the final step in the quest is to Return Home.
We all know it’s going to take a miracle to turn things around on this planet. I teach a course, Creating on Purpose, about manifesting miracles, in which I posit that we are here to co-create Heaven on Earth. That’s a big dream and it will take many, many people to make it happen, people who know how to create reality from their imagination and live into their dreams.
One of the primary tenets in this course is: “Never let your reality define your reality.” What I mean by that is to never let the reality that currently exists define the reality that can exist. Let me explain further.
Imagine you are standing in your current reality, with all its constrictions. You have only so much money, so much time, or your skills aren’t what they could be. You have various obstacles: bills to pay, kids to feed, aging parents to care for, or health concerns. These are all part of your current reality. Everybody has such constraints in one form or another. They are pre-existing conditions to what you want to create.
Now imagine that from this reality, you stretch toward a dream. You have a dream of making a contribution, of finding a more appropriate job, of going back to school, or getting your body in shape. That dream does not yet exist as reality, but we all know it can. Moving toward these dreams is the stuff that life is made of; it’s what gets us up in the morning. The place between what is and what could be is our “reality sandwich.”
Now imagine you are extending your attention like a rubber band between your current reality and your dream. We call this “intention,” whose root is tendare to stretch. The word attention has the same root, and when we set an intention, we stretch our attention toward a goal — a goal which does not yet exist in reality, but only in our imagination.
When a rubber band stretches, it wants to resolve. If you let go of one end or the other, it will snap back to its original shape. So in this case which end do you want to release: the one in your current reality or the one in your dream?
Most of us constantly reaffirm our current reality when we contemplate our dream: “It’s too expensive to go back to school; I don’t have the time; I’m not smart enough; it’s a tough job market; all the good men are taken; nothing I do ever succeeds.” Fill in the blank with your personal version.
When you reify what is, the end of the rubber band hitched to your dream lets go and simply returns to your current reality, with nothing changed. You’re left with the reality you started with.
If instead, you keep your attention on the dream, and move your reality in that direction, then the rubber band snaps toward the new reality. We consider where we might borrow the money, how we might find the time, or look for a tutor to help us get up to speed.
In actuality, you do this all the time. If you have an appointment at 8 in the morning, you arrange your reality accordingly. You know what time you have to get up, whether you have time for breakfast, and when you need to leave your house in order to fulfill your intention.
Can we do this on a grand scale of creating miracles together? Can we hold a vision of Heaven on Earth and adjust our reality accordingly?
Moving Down through the Chakras
Manifestation miracles is a process of moving your ideas and dreams down through each of the levels of the chakras into the earth plane until it condenses into solid form. It’s a process anyone can learn and follow; it just takes mastering the steps.
Step One: CONSCIOUSNESS CREATES
Creation begins in the 7th chakra, in the realm of pure consciousness, with a conception or idea. Ideas are like arrows in a quiver. We get lots of them and stow them away for future possibility. As we choose an idea to bring into being, it becomes an intention.
Step Two: VISION VITALYZES
Our intention is aimed toward a goal, a target we can see in the mind’s eye, but which doesn’t yet exist “in reality.” This requires the imaginative properties of the 6th chakra, located in the third eye. In order for our arrow of intention to properly land on our target, we need to keep our “third eye” fixed on the goal. Imagination is the art of the inner “I” making magic through images (I + mage).
Step Three: CONVERSATION CATALYZES
The next step is to talk about it, which brings you down the fifth chakra. The more you talk about your dream, the more likely you are to catalyze consciousness around its creation. You find people who want to help you by offering ideas, feedback, or support. Someone knows the perfect graphic designer, real estate agent, or angel investor. Someone else has good advice or resources for you.
Step Four: LOVE ENLIVENS
As soon as you talk about your dream, you are entering into relationship, related to the heart or 4th chakra. When you treat every relationship with an attitude of caring and love, those relationships thrive. This applies to your employees, your investors, your clients and your customers. Furthermore, what serves the greater good puts the wind at your back.
Step Five: POWER PRODUCES
As we move downward through the heart chakra, we start to enter the planes of actuality. Here in the third chakra, we have to take actions and do things. We have to go to the gym to lose weight, make phone calls to find funding, apply hammers to nails, or dig in the garden. When we empower our will, we produce what is necessary.
Step Six: PLEASURE PLEASES
As we enter the second chakra, we enter the waters of passion. Here we find the real principle of attraction: Pleasure Pleases. When we bring fun and pleasure to what we are doing, we make it more heavenly and certainly more attractive to others. People are attracted to join us, as the waters of this chakra make the creative process juicy and enjoyable.
Step Seven: MATTER MATTERS
At last we settle down into the first chakra, whose element is earth. Here we come into solid matter, the manifested plane. We learn that “Matter matters.” It matters what we put in our foundation, how we treat the earth and our bodies. It matters that we complete our tasks, because if we do–if we complete all the steps in the manifestation process-we bring something into being that never before existed. We have created a new reality.
Miracle Making
I believe this model offers a formula for a miracle. This is a formula of reclamation of each of the elements related to the chakras: (from the top down) consciousness, light, sound, air, fire, water, and earth. Each element exists inside of us as well as in the outer world. Each one proceeds into density, into the particular. But this is where we most need it now–not just in the lofty realms of consciousness where conception takes place, but right down here on the earth plane where people are starving and carbon is driving up the temperature.
I believe each of us has a piece of the puzzle, a vision of something we want to create-whether it’s in the realm of health or technology, green energy or economic transformation, peace-making or education. Each of us can imagine a way to make life a little more heavenly for ourselves and for each other. Affirming our current reality is child’s play. Anyone can do it. Creating a vision and bringing that dream into reality–that is the work of adults.
I believe that “Evolution is the Gods’ way of making more gods.” This means that our rite of passage into adulthood requires that we begin taking reality into our own hands. I don’t know what your version of Heaven on Earth might be. That is for you to decide. I can only offer you the steps to get there. But if the trajectory of evolution is turning back around and taking us home from the Hero’s Journey, back down to earth, then learning how to create something out of nothing is our lesson at this time.
When enough people learn how to do that together — then miracles are possible.
Anodea Judith, Ph.D. is the author of several best-selling works on the chakras, including Wheels of Life; Eastern Body, Western Mind; and the award-winning DVD, The Illuminated Chakras. This material is taken from her recent book, co-authored with Lion Goodman, Creating on Purpose: The Spiritual Technology of Manifesting through the Chakras, which was released by Sounds True in October 2012. Her newest book, The Global Heart Awakens, paints a grand vision for humanity’s rite of passage to the next era and will be available on Amazon July 16, 2013. Her websites are:
www.SacredCenters.com
www.CreatingonPurpose.net
www.GlobalHeartAwakens.com
Teaser image by Suus Wansink courtesy of Creative Commons license.
