Life: Cubed

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Life: Cubed

In my last post, I discussed the concept of homeostasis and began to touch on the search for homeostasis during our journeys here on Earth. Psychologists use the term “homeostasis” to refer to “a state of psychological equilibrium obtained when tension or a drive has been reduced or eliminated.” Many of the spiritual-minded who read this column will hear the echoes of Buddha in this definition, as Buddha posits in his teachings that desire is at the root of all suffering. To achieve psychological homeostasis, one must release the tension and the drive to succeed—one must release expectations. Similarly, to achieve spiritual homeostasis, one must release desire, which is a product of fantasies, expectations, and living in the future.

Let us look at life today like a puzzle—like a big Rubik’s cube. All of the facets of your life, all the multicolored squares of your existence, have the potential at every moment to line up as if by magic, but most of the time, you have to experiment with many, many permutations, many different scenarios, before you can convince those multicolored squares to fall in line perfectly. According to http://ruwix.com/, there are approximately 43 quintillion permutations in a Rubik’s cube, meaning if we had as many 6 centimeter-large Rubik’s Cubes as there are permutations, we could cover the surface of the Earth 275 times.

There are 43 quintillion possibilities in a Rubik’s cube—and it seems like a daunting task when you first approach it, if you have no strategy. However, if you try hard enough and for long enough, you will solve it. Anything with hands or tools to shift the planes of the cube could eventually solve it. The squares will line up and fall into place with a click just like you want them to. Unfortunately, first you need to get many sides of the cube incorrect while you get other sides right, all while you’re trying to figure out what makes the cube work . That is a perfect microcosm for life—you’re seeking balance the entire time you are here.

A Rubik’s cube with each side a consistent color is in homeostasis—but it is also a singularity, a rare occurrence, one in 43 quintillion. More often than not, the Rubik’s cube exists in a state of flux where each row of tiles is zinging by the other rows as you seek that perfect balance. To find balance is rare, although we put this premium on balance like it should be our default. No, our default is chaos. We are human. We were created to screw up. That’s what we do best. Our karma is achieved in how we recover from those screw-ups. Our destiny is defined by how we bounce back from the imbalances, from the misaligned events. When we do not screw up, we should reward ourselves for it, yes, but when we do screw up, we should recognize it for what it is. Life. The natural order of things. This is where compassion is born. Compassion is born of knowing that we are more chaos than we are order and that “There, but for the grace of God, go I.” Balance is to be sought after, yes, and treasured, but that does not mean you cannot find peace in imbalance or accept imbalance in others. Knowing that we are all always only a step away from the inevitable breakdown, the fated unraveling, gives you a sense of companionship with the rest of the human race.

As humans, we often obsessively seek order. Who has not known someone with a disorder that causes them to check the door lock 14 times before leaving, or someone who controlled their caloric intake to a dangerous degree, or someone who cleans compulsively to the detriment of health and normalcy? Even in order we find chaos, when we become too orderly and it rules our lives, creating chaos outside the boundaries of the order we have instilled. The obsessive search for order is a search for a singularity that may always elude you.

Similarly, in chaos, we can find order. In the unraveling of a life can come helplessness, a removal of agency, that allows a person to throw up his or her hands and start fresh. There is no place like rock bottom to give someone a new beginning, a chance to do it all from scratch. Even when we fall apart, and it seems like all is lost, and a life is lost, nature reasserts her order, breaks our bodies down and uses our molecules to fuel something new, and that energy lives again.

True spiritual homeostasis, true spiritual balance, is about trial and error. The boy who inspired this column is a stranger to me—he was rolling through 4 Rubik’s cubes in varying color schemes like they were easy, and I was fascinated by his genius. Unless you’re a genius at the Rubik’s cube of life, then you need to accept that having a strategy and then accepting the reality and consequence of trial and error are the only path to authentic peace and balance in this life.

Some part of each one of us will always be out of balance—the lines of our Rubik’s cube rarely all line up simultaneously. It is more likely that you will have most of the colors of each side showing the way they should, with a few stray lines still poking through. While we seek the peaceful balance we all long for, what if along the way we also chose to accept each version of ourselves that we twist into existence? Every click of the cube brings a new you–and there will be many permutations of the cube in your lifetime.

What if you accepted each permutation as perfect, as part of your journey toward balance?

What if you accepted you, just as you are, while also allowing for new permutations of you to be born with every twist of your story?

In love and light—Erica.

2 Posts Coming Soon—Life: Cubed and The Accidental Medium

I can tell from my stats that readers check my site on a daily basis, so I like to keep you all informed when new posts are coming soon. Today I am continuing work on 2 posts that I started earlier in the week; each post does take me about 2 to 2.5 hours to complete, and then, of course, I want to edit them 16 more times, but sometimes I just have to post it to keep the blog alive! This week I am working on 2 posts simultaneously, because I find both of the ideas too compelling and fun to write about to put off.
Earlier this week, I was thinking again about the concept of balance—specifically, homeostasis. Courtesy of Dictionary.com, we know that homeostasis is a noun that refers to a state or condition of a system—
1.
The tendency of a system, especially the physiological system of higher animals, to maintain internal stability, owing to the coordinated response of its parts to any situation or stimulus that would tend to disturb its normal condition or function.
2.
Psychology: a state of psychological equilibrium obtained when tension or a drive has been reduced or eliminated.
This little tidbit will lead to me telling you that life is a Rubik’s cube, why the Rubik’s cube is a perfect metaphor for life, and ultimately, why it is you can accept your life decisions and live in peace with them—all of them—even when they lead to chaos and disorder, even while working to achieve homeostasis. After beginning this post, I also happened to read, fortuitously, without Googling, just by opening up a browser, that the Rubik’s Cube graduated into the National Toy Hall of Fame 2 days after I started writing the post. This is the kind of synchronicity that tells me when I am on the right track and, now that you are reading this post, this is the kind of synchronicity that tells you the Universe intended for you to encounter it.
My second post for the week is one that I considered for some time but was unsure whether it would be too didactic for my readers’ tastes. A friend mentioned this week that some of my terminology could bear some explanation, and that it would be interesting to know more of my back story—i.e., how did I come into awareness as a medium. This post will contain some information from the book that I am writing about my experiences with severe depression, anxiety and, ultimately, mediumship, but it will not give away the whole shebang, because I want you all to be interested in my book when it is fully complete. I also plan to share in coming posts (anonymously, with all identifying details removed) some of the sessions and overall experiences I have had as a medium and Reiki practitioner thus far.
Overall, thank you as always for reading, and I hope you enjoy the posts when they are finished, as well as all of my previous posts. Drop me a line in the comments if you have any questions for me or any suggestions for future posts. I am looking into adding a frequently asked questions—medium style section to the site and maybe a possible forum-like area where people could post questions and I could answer them regularly. Feel free to follow me as well or drop me a line on Twitter @soulunfold.
Talk to you all soon. In love and light—Erica.

Freedom in Darkness: Letting Go of the Need to Know

It’s OK not to know.

I mean it. In fact, not knowing is the basis of the human condition. It is part of the contract we agree to before we take physical form—we pledge to embark on this journey in which we will not experience Divine love in the same way as we do in Spirit, where it infuses our beings and is ever present. When we take our human bodies, Spirit is still present, and God’s love is still everywhere, but there is a separation, often referred to as “the veil,” to prevent us from fleeing back home.

That veil is the basis of our constant need to control our environments and know the future. Human survival is about evolution and response, and nothing can prepare you for a situation like knowing exactly how it will play out. As a medium, I have experienced the constant need to know what comes next and temptation to pin that information down. I struggle with this temptation every day, but thankfully, the tools that I use are designed to gently remind me when my questions are overstepping boundaries that are in place for a reason. My divination tools offer me insight about the future without telling me too much. They tell me just enough to make better decisions.

When we sit up at night and we worry about the future, we waste time. Everyone knows that worrying is sometimes useful and sometimes a waste. Worry is a barometer—it is your intuitive self indicating that something is wrong. Your subconscious runs numbers and schemes all day, and that is where your worries surface from—your intuitive self can know more than your “aware” self. You do need to pay attention to those nagging concerns, but only if they are problems you can work on. Identify what you are worrying about, write it down, follow it with a multi-step plan to correct the imbalance, and thank your subconscious for the alert. Then: release. Release the worry. Surrender your fate to the Divine. The most relaxing feeling in the world is knowing you have done all that you can and the rest is in the hands of the Divine. You have incarnated on this Earth into a form that is not all-powerful like you are in Heaven. This is Heaven’s greatest gift to us. We have the opportunity to grow but almost none of the responsibility, because we have a limited range of power in our physical forms.

If you are worrying about something that is out of your hands, then you are toxic, septic, even, with energy that drains your batteries and does not give back, and you can cleanse yourself of that physically and spiritually. My Moonshine Meditation with Archangel Haniel from this blog is ideal for cleansing yourself of needless worry and feeling Divine comfort.

Worries are akin to messages from your computer that indicate something is off. One message from your antivirus that there is a Trojan horse in your system is great, because you can navigate to your antivirus program’s dashboard and tell the program to fix the problem. Done deal, no more alerts. However, sometimes worries become messages that in themselves are like viruses. A message from your PC that continually indicates something is wrong, but there is no source of the problem, is in itself often caused by a virus. This is what happens with worry in our spiritual systems. Worries tell us what is important to us and what we need to fix, but when they become viral and fear-based, they become our very human attempts to tell the future and dispel the terror of the unknown. It is easy to tell whether your worry is a helpful message or a virus. If you can do something about it and the worry disappears after you set in motion the fix for it, then it is a helpful message.

If your worry is something you can do nothing about and it plagues you mercilessly, then you are dealing with a virus and a spiritual and physical cleanse can help you.
Purging viral worry from your system is best achieved by meditation or what some people call “finding your center.” At my spiritual center is a place where I am eternally sitting in lotus position, enfolded in gentle green light and peace. Wherever I may be in the physical world, this aspect of my spirit is always present and available for me to take a time out. I developed this secret “room” at the center of my spirit by meditating for a few minutes every day. During my meditations, I was eventually able to achieve a place of such peace that I am now able to replicate it in visualization at a moment’s notice.
Finding your center is about learning to listen to Spirit, accessing Heavenly love, and then remembering what that feeling is like whenever and wherever you need it. The secrets to finding your center are as follows:

1. Regular meditation
2. Patience
3. Faith in yourself and in a power higher than yourself

In Corinthians, the Bible speaks of the nature and importance of love, famously stating in 1:13 “So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love.” Not to be forgotten are the underpinnings of love—faith and hope. Faith is nothing more than patience—patience with others, patience with self, patience with the human condition. Hope is love extended into the future. Hope is allowing space for love in your heart and putting a down payment on your dreams.

It’s not love, faith and hope alone that move the mountains in your way in life. It is what you do while you foster faith, hope and love. Faith is accepting the laws of physics on this Earth. Faith is the presence of action filling the void of defeat. Faith is reminding yourself that small changes make big results. You throw a rock, you get a splash. For every action on this Earth, there is an equal, but opposite reaction. Holding onto that thought will bring you more faith than you will ever need. And hope? Hope is the 5-year plan you wrote down in the first place to guide those rocks you are throwing into the waves. Hope is doing something about it gladly and allowing for your future to be what you want it to be.

Release and surrender are the keys to walking a spiritually tuned path. You have to release your expectations, surrender your path to God, and pledge to just try. That’s it. Then put one foot in front of the other–sometimes literally. I follow a blog titled Zen Daily Habits (at http://zenhabits.net/) and written by a man named Leo Babauta. In one of his first entries, Leo writes about how he changed his life, what the early days of those changes were like. He writes about making small changes—basically, taking baby steps. He speaks of lacing up your shoes and going running for 5 minutes every day until that 5 minutes becomes easier, then slowly increasing the amount of time you run and, as a result, improving your health. Leo writes brilliantly about change and how to make it happen in a method he calls “taking the long view.” Taking the long view means making small changes bit by bit in preparation for a future you would like to help shape. Taking the long view is love, faith and hope in action. Taking the long view is getting back in the game and playing for win or for defeat, for love of the game. Taking the long view is how you break out of ruts and taking the long view is how you halt worry in its tracks.

When mystic Eckhart Tolle writes about the power of living in the now, he harnesses a great force—the force of accepting that we do not know what the future brings, and that is OK, because the future does not exist yet, and every moment in the future is a moment that will come to pass in the now, therefore the now is all there is, so there is no point to living in the future. There are, however, like myself, some very literal-minded people out there who cannot live in the now. Planning is essential to human survival, and planning is a form of hope and faith. Where literal-minded people can access the power of now is at the point where your plan ends—be willing to take action, to try to shape your future, but then to sit back and enjoy the present moment as it unfolds. Enjoy the 5-minute run and the mini victory it brings you every day. Enjoy the idea if you are on a weight loss journey that every day you diet and exercise is a day you will look and feel better than the day before. The power of now combines efficiently with the idea of the long view when you juxtapose them with release, surrender, hope, faith and, most of all, love.

Out of the 3 concepts of faith, hope and love, it is hope that is most marketable for mystics. Hope is what everyone is selling, from famous mediums to modern mystics to Zen masters. Hope. I can give you hope, too. It is free. One foot in front of the other—that is the starter kit to hope. Anything can and does happen every day. That is hope.
Test your hope muscle. Try asking your higher power to take the wheel in the ultimate act of spiritual surrender. Try giving the angels, if they are your jam, as they are mine, or a specific angel permission to help you with some aspect of your life. Or just tell the Universe you give her permission to help you with a certain situation. Then, stand back and watch the opportunities roll in. It could be that a friend gives you a pair of running shoes you needed because they don’t fit her. It could be as well a blog post that advertises how to run a 5K in 5 weeks. It could be a friend asking you to go to Zumba.

Whatever it is, it’s coming if you ask for it. Watch for it. Do it. Keep doing it. God waits for you to arrive. You are a singular crystallization of God’s love, and the Universe is singing to you through me, through your dreams, through your joy and most of all, through your hope.

All you have to do is try.

In love and light, playing my heart out for you—Erica.