HAPPY NEW YEAR—NEW YOU—NEW PERSPECTIVE: The Enlightenment Game
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I DREAMT I WAS FLYING . . . by Joan Pancoe
“Without this ‘wearying world’ we cannot find enlightenment. Without the responses we would be bereft of the fabulous friction which illuminates our Buddha nature.”
Ngak’chang Rinpoche
FOR MORE: THE WISDOM OF DZOGCHEN
Dear Friend,
The number one question my psychic therapy clients ask is: “What’s the point of it all—i.e. the Earth Game?” This question usually comes after we’ve done a couple of past-life regression sessions and they’ve reactivated their soul memory of some of their most highly-evolved incarnations. When they come out of trance, each and every one says: “How could I have forgotten this!”
The search for the meaning of Life is what feeds our souls. The instinctual component of human nature known as addiction is an integral part of this search. Our job is to consciously choose to upgrade and refine our addictions from those that numb us and feed the death urge to those that awaken us and feed the life force. For more on this:
“The Nature of Addiction—It’s Only Human”
So too, is being goal-oriented a natural part of being human. Our job is to consciously choose to evolve our goals from those that feed the lower chakras to ones that feed all aspects of our Being in a more balanced way.
In the mass consciousness, (always the lowest common denominator), the goal is to feed the ego through safety and security, sense pleasure and power through cash and prizes. Some clients come to me for readings focused on fulfilling these goals as their priority—I call this horizontal development. However, the majority of people I see these days are more interested in reconnecting with their soul, remembering the assignment they took incarnation for and getting on with it. I call this vertical development.
The problem is that, if we become too obsessively goal-oriented with becoming enlightened and being free of the wheel of karma—as some of my clients profess—it’s still an addiction to fulfilling a goal—albeit a higher one—and still missing the point of the Earth Game.
Many of us have experienced at least moments of awakening to our enlightened nature in this life as well as in past lives. But sometimes we still don’t understand why our life circumstances have to be so challenging. We long for a simpler life with less external stressors pushing at us—which I call spiritual resistance training.
But, if we’ve already experienced past lives of awakening in which there were minimal external distractions—then the only way for our souls to continue to grow stronger is by adding these stressors, as a way to challenge us to not be distracted from our innate enlightened state of Being.
The Taoists have a saying that speaks to this: “A lesser sage lives in a cave in the mountains. A greater sage lives in the heart of the city.”
For example, I have clear visceral memories of a past life as a high priestess at Dendara in Egypt (I know it’s a cliché but there it is :)) which is one of my more evolved lives to date in female form, (not to mention one as a male sadhu in the Himalayas). So, after over 40 years as a trance channel in the east village of Manhattan, I’ve gotten over asking myself: “Where’s my temple or cave?” and instead just experience my home/office as an inner sanctum imbued with these same sacred energies carried from lifetime to lifetime . . . and smile.
I’ve really gotten that being consciously evolved in a temple or cave with no external distractions is not as challenging as what I’m doing now—FGOs (f**kin growth opportunities) and learning curve indeed!
Working with the energetic density of NYC and all the psychic bombardment my environment pushes at me has strengthened the boundaries in my vertical channel so much that I now call it “the galactic autobahn”—meaning that it runs at exceptionally high galactic frequencies with very stable structured operational standards.
When other trance channels ask me how I can function psychically in NYC, I tell them: “If I can do it here, I can do it anywhere.” I see it as a karmic final exam of this particular cycle of soul development that I’m playing out.
If we can think of ourselves as cocreators with Source, then we ourselves are our greatest work of art—and chipping away at all that is not our essential nature is exactly like a sculptor seeing the masterpiece contained perfectly within the block of marble. Then our work becomes an ongoing unwinding and detachment of all that is not our core Being as we work with Life as our guru—always offering us the perfect curriculum of spiritual teachings.
Here’s a questioning method we can use to help us remember our innate enlightened state of Being:
1. If I strip away my role as a child or parent, caretaker, or any labels based on my gender or vocational functions: “Who am I?”
2. If I strip away all my habitual mental and emotional patterns from this life and past lives as layers of identity: “Who am I?”
3. If I strip away all the layers of ego/personality with my preferences, desires and addictions: “Who am I?”
Another favorite sitting practice is to visualize going up each chakra and say (following each with “neti-neti”–meaning “not this—not that” in Sanskrit):
1. I am not this body
2. I am not my senses, desires or gender.
3. I am not my roles or functions.
4. I am not my emotions, compassion or desire for service
5. I am not my words, creations or channel for these.
6. I am not my thoughts, philosophies or witness of these.
7. I am that I am: pure being/consciousness/bliss absolute.
After this, with the intent of my mind, I dissolve down into the earth all the levels of chakra identity I have just detached from. Then, my mind is silent and I can just sit. The breath slows and sometimes stops. I AM pure Being. No thoughts. Bliss spontaneously arises. And that’s how I like to start my day!
The next level of the Earth Game commences when:
I. We can sit with our innate awakened Being and simultaneously hold the split-screen that all our personality layers—and, yes, that includes our neuroses and idiosyncrasies—are grist for the mill of our karmic unfolding. II. We are able to hold this perspective in our view of all Beings.
In the most ancient Vedic traditions of India, this is what is called Leela or Cosmic Play which means that: We are all parts of the Divine playing cosmic hide-and-seek with our true identity. For more on this: LEELA
So the ultimate goal is the realization that we’ve never left Source—i.e. home in the Game. As outside of the ego’s necessary tools of linear space and time—All is here and now. Then, as multidimensional beings we can enjoy playing in Leela with other human beings as parts of our greater Self—and let go of the final addiction: to be goal-oriented about enlightenment. This happens when we realize the absolute truth that what which we’ve been seeking has been inside us all along. Don’t you just love cosmic humor?
In the Buddhist tradition, Nirvana is not some external divine place, but the purified state of consciousness in which we’re free of all negative emotions. Nirvana has four characteristic features:
1. A state of cessation of disturbing emotions from one’s mind.
2. Absolute peace, a state of total tranquility of disturbing emotions.
3. Exuberant satisfaction, which is free from all forms of dissatisfaction.
4. Definite emergence, when one will no longer relapse to an unenlightened state.
For most of us, based on where we’re at on the karmic wheel, the most we can hope to enjoy in this incarnation is three out of four of the above criterion and that includes the vast majority of spiritual teachers and gurus. So, if we can let go of any obsessively goal-oriented ego-need to be fully enlightened (with no return to lesser states) and off the wheel (which is actually a form of aversion to what is), then we can experience a most wonderful way to be in our bodies and the world (but not of it) and enjoy playing the Earth Game fully!
For more on this:
“On Spiritual Teachers—Buyer Be AWARE!”
“If This Were Your Last Incarnation . . . What Would You Do?”
Recently, I watched a documentary about FDR. One of his biographers said that he believed that FDR would never have become president and thus fulfilled his destiny without the suffering he endured from contracting polio and becoming crippled—which cracked his heart open with compassion for his fellow man in a way no lesser challenge could.
Similarly, I was reading a new book about Ram Dass in which one of his long-time friends and caregivers said that Ram Dass‘s debilitating stroke, which left him in a wheelchair with a slower speech capacity and almost complete dependence on others, cracked open his heart with compassion for human suffering in a way that softened him and allowed a certain hard mental edge to fall away.
So, does that mean that suffering is a necessary means to fulfill our highest soul evolution? Well, I think that, historically at least, it may be the most accelerated, broadest path to opening the heart, but not the only one. Growing pains are a necessary part of the path—but suffering is optional, based on our level of resistance to what is, no matter how difficult and challenging.
Similarly, it’s just like having children is the most accelerated broadest path for opening the heart, but not the only one. Instead we can open our hearts to all beings as our children, especially if we remember past lives as a biological parent and consciously integrated those lessons so we don’t need to repeat them for our soul evolution.
So too, with suffering, if we can remember how many hundreds of incarnations we’ve suffered in and allow this remembrance to keep our heart cracked wide open with compassion for all human suffering, this can also be the path. Or as Maya Angelou said, referring to racial and generational karma: “Your crown has been bought and paid for. All you need to do is put it on your head.”
Some of us learn through being parents, some of us learn through suffering, or both. It takes what it takes. To borrow from Ram Dass: It’s all grist for the mill of our karmic healing. As we awaken to our timeless Self, we can choose to drop attachment to more and more layers of identity and ego armor. This allows our hearts to crack wide open so that our love-light shines through our Being.
For me personally, my first 30-year Saturn cycle was about embracing the concept that everything is made up of divine energy that connects us all. In my 2nd Saturn cycle, until age 60, I experienced that, not only is the universe made up of energy, but that this energy is conscious, and is ultimately one Being with billions of faces.
Now that I’m in my 3rd Saturn cycle, as of last year, I am getting that it is all about embracing the truth that the conscious energy that comprises the universe is fueled with LOVE. I’m beginning to allow myself to feel viscerally, not just theoretically, that: Love is the gold standard of all that we’ve been seeking—and that, in absolute reality—there is actually no way to hide from it—because it is ever-present. It is the motivating force of All That Is.
I know that—if I’ve tasted moments of this permeating love vibration—then so have you. We just need to choose to focus on it more—as what we feed, grows. In every moment, we’re all floating in an infinite cosmic ocean of love—but if we don’t awaken to this higher reality—then we can’t raise our game to the next level.
In closing, wishing us all a new year’s reboot of our perspective on the Earth Game that is overflowing with joy, love and light. Happy playing!
J o a n
“Buddha-Nature exists in everyone no matter how deeply it may be covered over by greed, anger and foolishness, or buried by his own deeds and retribution. Buddha-Nature cannot be lost or destroyed; and when all defilements are removed, sooner or later it will reappear.”
THE DALAI LAMA
FOR MORE: TEACHINGS TO SURPRISE AND INSPIRE
If you’ve been thinking about having a psychic and/or astrological reading with me, now is the perfect time to clarify your 2015 personal coming attractions:
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I’m looking forward to connecting with you, and if you’d like some help in deciding what type of reading best suits your needs, please call for a free consult:
212-982-6820
With karmic teacher Saturn newly launched into consciousness-expanding Sagittarius, there’s no better time than now to reboot our perceptual operating system from the ego-level to the witness-level of the Soul.
For more:
“Becoming One with the Inner Guru, or How to Make Saturn Your BFF”
To help catalyze an opening to a higher perspective, I’ve written a number of articles on themes such as: pleasure, joy and bliss, body karma, spiritual teachers, meditation, aliens and astrological themes.
MOST PERTINENT ARTICLE TO READ NOW:
INFINITE ABUNDANCE: Owning Our Inner Jupiter
FOR MORE: WRITINGS
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If you want to watch me performing past-life regression therapy, check it out—it’s only 22 minutes:
If you’d like to read more about my karmic pleasure rut:
The Amorous Adventures of a Modern Mystic
For more of Joan’s art:
GALLERY OF MULTI-DIMENSIONAL DELIGHTS
NEVER UNDERESTIMATE THE POWER OF THE RIPPLE EFFECT
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