Sunday, August 28, 2011

Spiritual Life Coaching: Self Transcendence

By Jason Lincoln Jeffers


In the movie, "The Matrix," Morpheus says to Neo, "You are living in a prison that you cannot smell or taste or touch; a prison for your mind." Just after college, I worked at a psychiatric hospital where I observed and recorded the behavior of schizophrenic patients. It became obvious immediately that their minds served as their own prisons.

The schizophrenic patients displayed abnormal behaviors such as: incongruent speech, delusional talking, pacing, posturing, blank staring, talking to self, and repetitive movements. But there are plenty of people who society deems as perfectly normal who are to varying degrees, also incarcerated in their own minds. They may not do a lot of pacing or posturing but they do frequently resort to emotional and physical violence to defend their own cherished opinions. If other people disagree with them, they are immediately deemed as "the enemy." Stirring up conflict, debate, drama, and emotional violence is what they live for. Now, I ask you, which is the worse form of insanity?

Ultimately, the purpose for us all being here on Earth at this time is to evolve in to conscious beings. Once you can recognize your ego, you will start to realize that it alone is responsible for all the drama, conflict, abuse, and chaos that has been a part of your life. Consciously recognizing your ego in action and the dysfunction of it is the key to self transcendence. A Spiritual Life Coach can help you to move beyond your egoic mind so that you can begin to understand who you are on your highest level, and from there you'll find that there is no suffering.

Moving toward non-suffering means fully realizing your higher Self. This is the meaning of becoming "Self Realized." Unconscious infliction of emotional or physical violence onto others will inevitably bring suffering to both the victim and the perpetrator. The perpetrator of the violence will eventually, in some way, come to reap what he or she has sown. This is known as karma. This suffering eventually leads to humility in all action. From a place of humility you naturally become still and present. You start respecting and honoring the present moment. Then the universe can manifest the synchronicity that would have been there all along if you had only been open to it. Humility also allows you to appreciate the beauty and wonder in everything, including your so-called "imperfections."

You don't have to wait until you return to your home in heaven to be in heaven. And you don't have to wait until the rapture to ascend or become One with your higher Self. All you have to do is refrain from identifying with your ego. See its emotional pain-body as an exit sign for releasing your imprisoned Self. If you have a heavy pain-body, you will suffer until you become conscious. From suffering, comes awakening. Looking back on the pain-body that I carried for over thirty-five years, I am grateful now for the wisdom that it has revealed to me. As the saying goes, "What doesn't kill you, only makes you stronger." It wasn't until I was able to face my pain for what it was; recognize it, accept it, and live with it consciously, that I was able to finally transcend it and let it all go. Ignoring, resisting, or attempting to escape the pain only serves to strengthen it.

The ego inevitably leads to suffering because it is not who you are. The wounded ego from childhood trauma creates an "unknown face" that Carl Jung called the shadow. Then we project all of this repressed trauma onto others in the forms of judgment, condemnation, blame, intolerance, and derision. The reason we suffer is so that we can fully experience the shadow or dark side of our nature. This, in turn, creates the impetus for movement back toward Spirit. After we've had that experience (and I think we can all agree that the human race has suffered enough), we can then finally move past the ego and evolve. Therefore, evolution of the soul is the ultimate reason behind all suffering. Suffering is never at random or in vain. To the contrary, all forms of suffering stem from some point in the history of collective. All suffering is part of a higher effort to bring us all home--to awaken us to our true Self.




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