Love and the Soul Workshop

Love and the Shadow

A  workshop with Dr Marcus T. Anthony  

www.22cplus.blogspot.com

What does it truly mean to love someone spiritually?

Forgiveness, healing and the ability to love unconditionally lie at the heart of the spiritual journey. There is much talk about being loving in spiritual and New Age circles. Most people on a spiritual journey realise that giving and receiving love are central to their lives, and the futures of the human species. Many spiritual philosophies state that love is the central purpose of existence.

The problem in expressing this ideal is that much of the human mind lies in shadow, or unconsciousness. Despite our conscious attempts to love and be loved, the shadow rises up from within, and we can easily fall back intro fear, anger, blame and hurt. Further, because many spiritual philosophies put pressure on us to be “loving”, many spiritual seekers begin to live a subtle lie, and deny the “darkness” within themselves. This is a spiritual trap. Unless the shadow is allowed to surface with unconditional love, it is impossible to love ourselves, or others unconditionally. This then inevitably results in “drama” – conflict with others as the shadow projects itself out into the world, and onto others.

The other level of the problem is that there are few people who have the courage and commitment to love unconditionally. When those around us are unable to receive us in our vulnerable states, it is simply not safe to express ourselves fully, in all our human imperfection.

In the Love and the Shadow workshop, participants are introduced to ways to allow the deeper and unconscious parts of the mind and soul to emerge, with the love and support of others. It is particularly useful for individuals and couples who have recurring struggles and dramas in their relationships (intimate, family, friends, work), and want to move beyond the issues and into a state of greater “love”.

A key concept of the workshop is spiritual empowerment. Spiritual empowerment is being able to stand in your power as a man or woman. The requirement is that you learn how to assume greater levels of responsibility for your life and your mental projections in a world where most people relate to others by giving their power away, or by manipulating and dominating.

The key to reclaiming the shadow’s power over your life is to embrace the wounded child. This is the deeply hurt part of us which has “split” off from the consciousness mind, and lies trapped in a world of pain, fear, and anger. It is the wounded child which lies behind the ego, and so many of the problems in our relationships.

Love and the Shadow is a deeply moving and inspirational workshop for those wishing to truly commit to a greater spiritual consciousness. In doing so, you will become part of a greater groundswell of humanity moving us towards the greater spiritual evolution of our world.

What will you learn in the Love and the Shadow workshop?

The Sins of the Father

For the last two decades or so, I have used dreams and visions as a guide to understanding the soul. This can be a great way to develop insight into your soul issues, and even those of others whom you are in relationship with. All minds are connected, so sometimes what you see in dreams and visions represents the energies within other people’s minds. Others’ psychological projections can also affect your own mind, and often this will come through in your dreams. When creating our personal futures, our dreams can be a powerful guide.

A vision is a short dream or image which reveals some information to you. They can occur during deep sleep, but they most commonly happen when you are in the drowsy state between sleep and wakefulness, such as just after you awaken, or when you are drifting off to sleep.

Last night I had an interesting vision regarding my wife, when I was not quite asleep. I saw an image of her, and there was an insect on her lower back, just at the base of the spine. She was asking me to help her get it off. I knew immediately that this dream related to an energy which was affecting the base chakra (the energy centre at the base of the spine which deals with sexual issues and empowerment, amongst others).

I then actively participated in the dream, and connected with the energy of that part of my wife’s consciousness system. I saw that i]there was an issue to do with her father. There then began a mini-dream, where I saw her father in a room. He was agitated, and wanted to sit down on a chair. “I want to be the king”. I could sense that he viewed the chair was a kind of throne, when in fact it was just a humble chair. Unfortunately there was a black woman’s handbag on that piece of furniture, so he was unable to sit on it. This caused him great frustration.

Next I channeled the energy of my wife’s father to my wife as a child. I saw that his soul issues were very much about being controlled by women. He has never fully come into his power as a man – or to put it another way, his tendency is to give his power away to women completely (he is still alive). As an adult he has never transcended this issue. When he first had children he related to them more as a child than as an adult. In fact he tried to make them responsible for his own inner child. That means that he dumped his stuff on them. “Here, I don’t want to deal with this. Please save me”, is what he said to his kids metaphysically.

The truth is that all adults have unresolved soul issues, and they project them onto their children. What is disowned forms the shadow of the mind. This is true not merely at a behavioral level (acknowledged by modern psychology), but this also occurs at an energetic level. The energy passes to the child while it is in the womb, at birth, during childhood, and typically right through the lifespan, even after the parent has passed away (there is no such thing as “death”, in the sense of the end of consciousness).

When we take the time to deal with our own issues, it is thus a gift for all those around us, and particularly our children. What you do not heal, you pass on your stuff down the line, not only to your future selves, but to your descendants.

When life seems difficult and we are required to look within and see and feel our own pain and darkness, it helps to remember that our healing work is a gift to ourselves, and to all of humanity. Healing oneself is truly an act of love.

Marcus

Visions of Tomorrow

Where there is no vision, people perish. So it says in the Bible, and there is much truth to the statement. As individuals, as societies, as nations and as a collective species we all require visions of the future. For it is our visions which draw us forward.

The kinds of visions that we are exposed to come from three common sources. These are the visions found in education, those delivered by governments and those found in the popular culture and media.

Visions in education and those of governments tend to be similar. They are usually focused upon building a sense of national unity, via developing a sense of shared history. There is typically a national mythology involved. These mythologies, although based in the past, tend to direct the way policy-makers construct visions in the present. If the vision is too disconnected from the past, the people won’t buy it. In the USA, the idea of freedom and individualism is central to the national psyche, so even a slight turn towards collectivism or socialism can cause significant levels of rejection from many people – a Obama has discovered.

In Australia, the national anthem drums into us Aussies: “Australians all let us rejoice, for we are young and free.” No such sentiments of freedom in the Chinese national anthem, which implores the Chinese people to create a great wall against the enemy. There’s quite a different sense of destiny contained in those stories.

There is a danger when visions fail to materialise. Obama asked the American people to believe in the audacity of hope (dare to dream). In China, President Hiu Jintau put forward the idea of the Harmonious Society. This macropolicy tells the story of Chinese people living together in trust and harmony, and in unity with nature. It even exhorts the value of democracy, believe it or not. Needless to say, the term “harmonious society” has been the object of great derision in China, because the reality and the dream are so vastly different. Whenever someone steps out of line (i.e. challenges the local, provincial or national leaders) the joke goes that they will soon be “harmonised”. Many westerners may not realise that although there is implicit support for the Communist Party amongst most Chinese (if for no other reason than there is no viable alternative), there is also a great cynicism and even distrust of it.

Visions can unite people, but they can also lead to negative consequences, or even disaster. 

Life on Mars, Life in the Cosmos

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Mars landscape just beyond the Argyre rim

Marcus T Anthony's new site and blog can be found at www.mind-futures.com.
 
It seems that not a year goes by now without further tantalizing evidence for the existence of life on Mars being brought forward, even if that life is long extinct. 

A recent significant finding has been that water existed on the surface of Mars in large quantities. A little over a month ago, an intriguing study from the European Space Agency found that water existed on the surface of Mars for hundreds of millions of years, mostly in the form of rivers. This was somewhat of a lesser finding than that of an American team, who just a couple of weeks prior to that had published a paper in Nature Geoscience journal, suggesting that a massive ocean had covered about a third of the Martian surface 3.5 billion years ago. 

Now a report published three days ago in the journal Earth and Planetary Science Letters, reports that rocks have been identified on Mars that may contain evidence of life. It’s not quite proof, but close to it. 

This way or that? Magnificent!

Regular readers of 22C+ will be aware that I am in Europe at the moment on a month-long vacation. I made the decision to come to Europe several months ago. At that time I had several options up my leave. One of the other major choices was to go back home to Australia. After all, I have not seen some members of my family for several years, and my mother is now past 70 years of age and has had a few health problems. I could also have gone to the United States. It was an option that my wife was keen on (and she liked the idea of Europe to).

To be honest it wasn’t an easy decision to make. There was a sense of being pulled in more than one direction, and I felt a little guilt at the possibility of not visiting my family members after such a long absence.

When faced with decisions like this, where the future meets me face to face and asks
“Which way now?”, I go where the energy leaves me. Another way of putting it is that I allow myself to be pulled by the call of Spirit. Those of a more skeptical mindset might prefer to call it plain old intuition.

I used the Quick Check, and listened to my feelings (intuitive methods I outline in Sage of Synchronicity), but this was one of those choices where it seemed that there was energy on all possibilities. And because of the emotional side of it, I wasn’t sure that my feelings weren’t distorting the issue.

So I put the question out to Spirit one night as I was retiring.

“Dear God, which of these three choices has the highest resonance with my spirit?”

After I fell asleep, a song came to me during the night, filling my dreams. The same song kept popping into my head in the following days, and I knew that it was a strong message from Spirit. What was the song?

Can People Really Read Minds?

In some popular and science fiction movies there are people who can read minds. In What Women Want, for example, Mel Gibson is able to read the thoughts of those around him. In the movie this is an involuntary process. The thoughts just pop into his head. Personally, I think it would have been a far better movie if we could have just seen what Mel was thinking about. Judging by recent media stories, there’s some mighty interesting stuff in there.

In another version of mind reading, usually found in science fiction movies, we have “empaths’ who can get a sense of what people are thinking and feeling. They are a regular part of Star Trek narratives. Empaths can also sense the future, including danger. They may not read minds thought for thought, but they can pick up “the vibe”.

Is there any truth to these tales of mind reading? Can some people actually read minds? Will all people one day read minds, as part of human evolution?

The Past as the Future

 Paris, shot taken from atop the Arc de Triomphe

I am writing this from one of the countless numbers of cafes in Paris. This is my first time in Europe. I waited a long time. 44 years to be precise. For the past 11 years I have been living in Asia, the economic hot zone of the world. Asia is often seen as the future of the world economy, while Europe is increasingly being seen as the past by many, especially in light of the world economic crisis. In his book Mind Set, Futurist John Naisbitt devoted a single chapter to Europe, dismissing its future as being guaranteed mediocrity. He thinks Europe, with its heavy socialism, reduced work ethic, and heavy labour costs will find it impossible to compete with Asia, and even the USA.

Naisbitt spends a lot of his time in China these days. In his latest book, China’s Megatrends, Naisbitt lavishes praise on China’s economic and social achievements, and  outlines why China is the future of the world. He states that China has developed a new kind of economic and political system which is challenging the West and its assumptions about the superiority of democracy. The book, strangely, is almost completely free of any analysis of China’s authoritarian system of governance, including the lack of freedom of speech and rule of law and it spoor human rights record.

Naisbitt is right though to point out the importance of China. It’s synthesis of authoritarianism and capitalism has worked miracles for the Chinese economy. In 1976 when Mao Ze Dong died, the median Chinese salary was 42 RMB a month. I’m not sure what the exchange rate was back then, but in today’s currency that’s not much more than five American bucks. A month! Today the Chinese GDP is growing at around 10 percent, the average income is heading towards 3000RMB a month; and in the big cities like Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Shenzhen, the middle class are probably closer to 10 000 RMB. Although there are probably about 100 million Chinese people living below the poverty line, there are an awful lot of Chinese people who are unbelievably rich. These new rich have more money than they know what to do with. You might find some of them buying property near you sometime soon, as the recession really kicks in. In Australia the boom in the housing market has been kept afloat by cashed up Chinese buyers coming into the market. 

I remember reading a comment by a rather arrogant American on the Yahoo! comments section just a couple of years ago, under an article about China. He wrote.

“I love the Chinese. They do great laundry.”

Sadly for that chap, it could well be that his children will be doing laundry for the Chinese.

I’m not going to get into0 the economic forecasting here. However, being in Europe is a great chance to compare aspects of the Chinese/Asian world and the old West.

Let me just comment on one or two first impressions.

The Death of Education

In 2002 I went to work at the second best language institute in Beijing, known as Erwai, or the Number 2 Foreign Language Institute. I was the Director of Studies of an English university preparation programme. Students aged 17-21 attended a nine-month intensive. The hope was that they would then be able to gain admission into a foreign university in a western country.

It was something of a shock for me to find myself leading a programme which had little or no academic merit, and which served no purpose but to give the students a piece of paper. It was credentialism at its worst. The students paid a lot of money to attend the school, and they expected to pass. Not to be disrespectful to them, but many – probably around half, were lazy and unmotivated.

It was my first exposure to education for the credit, a pervasive problem right across China, Hong Kong and Taiwan, where I have taught. It is a problem in many nations across the world.

In such a system, learning is no longer a process of personal growth, but of inflation of ego and social status. It is not surprising that plagiarism is rife in the Chinese system. One recent survey found that 40 percent of Chinese PhD students had plagiarised at least part of their doctoral thesis. Amongst academics, plagiarism is similarly common, and accepted. Many foreign teachers I know of in China have commented that academics simply copy large parts of their papers from other previously published papers. They do it because nobody cares. Many universities have become diploma mills.

One day at Erwai, I received a book report from a student. It was of Treasure Island, a perfectly good book for any non-native English student to have a crack at. The report went something like this (remember, this kid could barely string two sentences together).

Join our intrepid travelers of the seven seas, as they venture into unknown lands. Marvel at the fearless courage of little Jim Hawkins, as he battles that dastardly villain of the high seas, Long John Silver! Agh, me hearties, there’s gold on that thar island!

Needless to say, I wasn’t fooled by the student’s cunning back cover copying. In class, I handed the paper back with a fail grade, and a note saying he had to do it again. I didn’t single him out, as that would have been a big loss of face. Still, he wasn’t happy! He became extremely angry, and demanded to know what was wrong with the paper. I simply told him that it was copied, so he had to do it again. He stood up, pushed his desk aside and stormed out of the room. To make it worse, his uncle came to the campus the next day (with the students standing right behind him), walked up to me, and started screaming at me in Chinese, wagging his finger in front of my nose. He said his nephew was so upset he was threatening to kill himself.

Flying Things

If you have been wondering why things have been a bit quiet around here lately, it's because I have been rather busy. Today I'm off to Europe for a one month holiday. There's a 14 hour plane trip, which I'm not really looking forward to, but the destination will make it worthwhile! I'll be in France for a few days, then Portugal, and maybe Spain after that. I'll be posting the odd thing here during that time, but not as much as usual.

Just to keep you thinking, here's a little more on the UFO incident, over Hangzhou, China. It's an interesting case. It doesn't really make sense for the military to come out and say it's a military operation. Since when have the Chinese military cared about what the public thinks? And why do this stuff over a major city? If its an experimental craft, it would make more sense to do it over a less populated area.

However I have to say it looks like a manmade vehicle to me, at least the one seen flying across the sky with a trail behind it. Compared to the UFOs I saw in Australia in the 1990s, it looks rather clumsy. The ball of light I saw had a much more etheric look and feeling to it, and looked to be  moving without propulsion. 

Here's a YouTube video of the China UFO story.

Marcus

  

From Quiet Bookworm to Conquerer of Everest

Every now and then I read a story which makes me take notice. I have to say that the story of Wang Lei, a 38 year-old Chinese-American woman is one such story.  It is the story of how a bookish young woman became only the eighth person in the world to climb the highest highest mountain peaks on all seven continents. 

Wang was born in Jiangsu province in China, and went to the USA in her twenties. Anyone who has spent a lot of time in East Asia will probably tell you that the Chinese are generally not particularly physical people. In the modern age, those in cities have little connection to nature, and most spend their time working, eating, sleeping, or attached to electronic media of some sort. I have mentioned that in Hong Kong, a large percentage of children never touch grass or trees before they reach the age of five. The internet has become particularly addictive to a culture which seems almost disembodied, at its most extreme.

While Chinese women can be quite assertive around the home (I speak from experience – my wife is Chinese!), they are generally expected to be quiet and obedient in social situations, at work, and in educational settings. This is particularly true of younger women. I often think that the Japanese cartoon figure Hello Kitty, is an expression of a social stereotype of East Asian women – small, cute, lovely, and to top it off, she has no mouth. In other words, she should be seen and not heard. 

 She's so lovely!

It must be noted that Chinese women are generally far more assertive than Japanese women. Mao Ze Dong once famously stated that women hold up half the sky, and believed that women should be an active part of Chinese society (mostly to slave away in factories, but let’s not quibble). This created more social space for women to express themselves than in some other Asian societies.

It seems that Wang was not much different from the quiet Asian woman stereotype. She was a self-described bookworm, and when she first went to live in Boston she was very scared to walk even one block to the subway, because she was terrified of the cold weather. What’s more, her life appeared to be a product of what I call the “money and machines” society - she worked in “IT and finance”. She had no experience with athletics or outdoor adventure activities whatsoever.

It is thus seemingly incredible that she just recently became the first Asian American to climb the “Seven Summits”, the highest mountain peaks on all seven continents. She completed the final hurdle last week, finally scaling Mount Everest. Incredibly, she also achieved her ambition to hike to the North and South Poles.