6 Ways You Haemorrhage Mind Energy

It is not always possible to keep an eye on what our mind is up to, but if we don’t monitor or at least check in with what it’s doing, and just leave it to its own devices, we can soon become the victim of our own mind energy haemorrhages. 

The mind, just like the brain and the body, uses energy.  Mind-energy is relatively invisible but is none-the-less vital.  What is visible are the results of an energy haemorrhage.  Someone who is haemorrhaging energy is soon wiped out; precursored by a loss of clarity, exhaustion, missing deadlines and making poor decisions.  Energy haemorrhages lower the overall frequency at which we individually vibrate – or in non-energy terms – we can plummet into tearful despair.   

Knowing how we might be losing vital mind energy, is a good way to ensure that we don’t.  The following are the six common ways that you might be haemorrhaging your vital mind energy;

  1. Dwelling

The general definition of dwelling is to continually think or talk about something that is unpleasant or upsetting.  There is certainly a time and place for discussing our own difficulties and experiences with someone who cares about and loves us, but then there is a time to stop.  Sometimes other people just do not want to hear about our upsets.   Often we continue to talk and think about situations that have upset us, in order to rework it, resolve it, let it sit more easily in our mind, but sometimes to keep dwelling is not to solve anything, but to continue to keep the hurt alive within ourselves.  It’s a double whammy, to be hurt by someone and because they will not acknowledge it, we then hurt ourselves forevermore by slipping on a mind puddle right back into the hurt that was caused in the first place.  Dwelling, even when it is perfectly understandable, is an energy haemorrhage to keep your conscious eye on.

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2020 Vision

It’s late summer in England, on one of the hottest days of the year, and I’m excited.  20/20 vision usually refers to hindsight, but behind the scenes, I have been really busy planning forward with the new 2020 Hebe College curriculum, that I can now share with you, that includes some new and fascinating topics that I’m sure you are going to enjoy.  

Before that, I just wanted to take this opportunity to sincerely thank each and every one of you for making the progression of Hebe College such a success; for enroling in the new Online Study, attending courses and seminars, giving the kindest feedback, and for all of your contributions in class.  You are truly incredible people with the most interesting life experiences, and you never cease to amaze me.  I look forward to seeing you in the next academic year. 

Registration is now open for next year, and there are so many events listed, that it is now showing Online on two pages, and you may have to scroll down to find the course or seminar you wish to attend on Page 2.  Whilst some courses and seminars will be scheduled every year, due to the number of different topics now offered, some other events will be scheduled every other year.  The suggestion is … if you see it on the Calendar now, book it!

* NEW LISTINGS *  Especially for those of you who have attended most if not all of the events over the years, I’m really excited to let you know about the introduction of three new opportunities; Masterclasses in Psychoanalysis (3 weeks)Child Psychology (2 weeks) and a seminar on an Introduction to Philosophy.  Please follow the title links to read further details.

As with all courses and seminars, you do not need to have taken any other course to enrol on the one you are interested in.  Due to the success of the Introduction to Psychology 1 course, another opportunity to attend has been added to the 2020 Calendar, in addition to an Introduction to Psychology 2course, that includes additionally fascinating topics in psychological development.

* EARLY BIRD OFFER *  As a special offer, anyone wishing to attend the Forensic Psychology 3 course commencing in January 2020, can now register to secure an early bird discount offer, that expires on 4th October 2019.

For the remainder of this year, the Autumn Courses and Seminars are listed below, but for anyone wishing to put something in the diary now, to look forward to in 2020, please follow the links below to view the new 2020 Calendar and Registration.

I look forward to seeing you there!
Best Wishes
Carole Sawo 

 


Join us In Class, or here are some related courses in the Online Study
Is it really possible to control someone else’s mind or have someone control ours? With all the thoughts that swirl around, is it even possible for us to ‘control’ our own mind?
 
Selecting the most exciting areas of Criminology, Psychiatry, Forensic Science, Psychology and Psychoanalysis, you will be captivated throughout the course as you explore criminal case studies and forensic themes.
 
Your mind is full of defence mechanisms that operate outside of your conscious awareness.  Whilst some function to protect your mind, others activate that sabotage your relationships, conversations and opportunities. 
 
An evening of ghosts, perfectly timed with the yuletide season, explores the concept, formation and meanings of all things ghostly.  With discussion of images, orbs, energy & temperature shifts, manifestations, historical sightings and local hauntings, all are encompassed on this thrilling evening with ghosts.

The Three C’s To Finding Happiness

Happiness, like love, is a transient emotion.  Like all emotions, they come and go with the ebb and flow of life – all the time.  Whilst it is true that ‘what we focus on gets bigger’, happiness is not an actual ‘thing’ in itself.  We cannot see it, to focus on, and despite temporary impulse purchases, we definitely cannot buy happiness.

Life can be really difficult.  Everyone has hardships, illness, loss, and stress to contend with.  We can easily find reasons to be unhappy if we look for them, so better not to look for them.  Better to look for happiness, however,  therein lies the problem.  As it is in the pursuit of happiness that actually prevents us from obtaining it.

The secret to finding happiness, therefore, is not to seek it at all, but to pursue three of its closest cousins.  The first relative is contentment. Contentment doesn’t fight.  It just is.  The way to contentment is much easier because it requires less and not more of you and your efforts. Contentment exists right now in this moment.   To achieve contentment, slow down, sit still, think for a moment – count your blessings.  You have the chair you are sitting on, air, access to water and food.  The air is yours for free.  Breathe in as much as you want.  Relax.  If you put all your worries to one side for just a moment, you have opportunities.  And more than that, you have freedom.  

The second relative to happiness is contribution.  Sometimes, we can think that we must perform huge saviour-like acts; observable, quantifiable, magnanimous gestures that have a visible impact on improving the well-being of others.  The truth, is that true acts of compassion are almost invisible.  A smile at a stranger has the power to save a life.  An email of thanks.  A door held open.  Or a silent gift, are all acts of contribution.   We don’t need a job description, a badge, title or order from anyone else.  We put ourselves in service to others.  Contributing to other people’s well-being in the smallest of ways has the power to create the greatest improvements for everyone.  We find our ‘why’ when we help others out.  With a ‘why’ we always find a way.  

The last ‘C’ to finding happiness is choice.  The bottom line, unfathomable though it may initially seem, is that we can actually choose to be happy. Without the use of mantras, excessive, often unrealistic positive thinking, written notes to the self, hypnotherapy or any other intervention from anyone else at all, we can simply decide that we have had enough of having enough and now we are going to choose to be happy.  Despite all that we have to contend with, it is possible to activate a shift in perception, over to a mental base in the mind where we consciously choose to reference our experiences from now on, against a platform of happy.

If happiness is the elusive butterfly, then the three ‘C’s make up the net that helps us find it.  Happiness is a by-product emotion that we experience when we are doing something else.  Find something to be grateful for. Think of a way to give someone else even the smallest help today.  And choose to think, that even though life happens, the air, the actions, the thoughts, and decisions are ours, and a millisecond shift in perception is all that is required to help us realise that we are happy after all.


Carole Sawo

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Silencing the Mind Monkey

We are living in a very changeable, fast and busy world.  On the outside, we are in the process of adjusting to new weather conditions, increases in individual outbursts, rallies of frustrated protesters, economic shifts, political rumblings, and faster communication technology.  On the inside, we are in the process of doing exactly the same thing. 

As on the outside – so on the inside.   Neurologically we are having to speed up when many people long to slow down.  It’s our choice to try and keep up, but the penalties for not doing so are electronic, sometimes financial detriments and social exclusion.  The monkeys in the mind no longer relentlessly chatter and play psychological tricks, now, for some people, they are rampaging.  It’s no wonder so many people turn away from the world and hide, literally and metaphorically, disconnect from social and electrical grids and isolate themselves.

Rudyard Kipling began his beautiful poem ‘If’ by writing, “If you can keep your head when all about you are losing theirs and blaming it on you”.   In analytical terms, if you can maintain your central control in all the projection cross-fire, without being seduced by the unconscious forces that move people or succumb to a lesser version of yourself, then you will have done very well.

Learning how to remain calm in the mind when everything and everyone outside is in turmoil, is a skill that is completely worth mastering.  In the absence of being able to manage, people turn to all sorts of distractions to help them cope, but many distractions are the beginnings of addiction and distraction doesn’t stop the mind monkeys chattering. 

I am happy to predict, however, that there are two things that are about to happen.  Whilst the hare appears globally in charge,  as everyone knows, it’s the tortoise that wins the race.  The first evolution is that people will begin to individually understand that spirituality has nothing to do with religion. The second is that there will be a rise in collective consciousness, a human upgrade that started years ago.  As I wrote in ‘The Prophecy’ in Pandora’s Panacea (2007), “when hundred monkeys tilt thy brink ….    In everyday language, we have at our fingertips free and ancient practices of psychological restoration to ease transitions, that do not require us to go anywhere, join any group or perform behaviours that can feel embarrassing and odd.  We can simply learn how to meditate.  Not just in rooms created for peaceful reflection, but in offices intended for fast commerce.   

Many years ago, I created the concept of my own college of the mind and have been building it ever since.  Over that time, some people have asked why someone with a foot firmly in the teaching of science, would also offer opportunities to explore the deeper philosophies and spiritual disciplines.  The answer, quite simply, is that I knew everyday people would want to explore all the chambers of the mind mansion and that they would have nowhere to go for a spectrum of practical, grounded information and guidance – all that people would need to navigate future evolving worlds.  

It’s easy to be spiritual in a spiritual place, but your task is to be spiritual in an unspiritual place.  Or for anyone still unsure about the word spiritual, it’s easy to be nice in calm surroundings, but it’s a task to be so when in the company of those with seeming intentions to cause us and others harm.  In those places, we need to learn the ability to silence the internal monkey, when the external bananas are flying!

With all the above said, I’m delighted to let you know that the next live event at Hebe College is a timely seminar on ‘How to Meditate’, in which you’ll learn the fundamentals and differing practices of meditation, in quiet places and on the go.  After all, if you don’t already know that when you offer a monkey a nut it will not take it, but will suddenly grab the entire bag from your other hand, then you’ll at least need to know a teacher that does.


Carole Sawo

27th July 2019

 


Can’t join us in class?  Here’s some related courses in the Online Study;

The VLF’s

In my observation of human behaviour in everyday life, in addition to watching the energy that moves not only between people but within them, I’ve long thought that people vibrate at different frequencies.  It’s something I wrote about years ago, and I draw your attention here to those whom I refer as the V.L.F’s – people who vibrate at Very Low Frequencies.

People, essentially, are batteries!    The brain cell, the neuron, is basically a tiny battery that depolarises in order to fire the chemical messenger along an electrical pathway.  In our mind, cellular activity translates into thoughts, memories and the processing of sensory information. VLF is a description of radio wavelengths typically used by submarines.  In the mind, VLF’s transmit at the level of depth subconsciousness.  In energy terms, they operate at the sub blue – below the speakable.   In any medium, VLF communication does not contain much bandwidth!

You will know when you have met a VLF because they say words or perform behaviours that are so spectacularly low level, unreasonable or ridiculous that it leaves your brain trying unsuccessfully to fathom their utter nonsense and often blinded behaviour.  Behaviour, that has the ability to seduce even the strongest mind to vibrate at lower frequencies, and many a good mind is spun into the depths of confusion and despair when encountering a VLF.  

We might assume, incorrectly, that VLF’s are those without an education or knowledge, but what makes someone’s ‘frequency’ high or low is not a question of one’s level of ignorance or intelligence.  There are lots of VLF people to be found in very senior professional positions, whose overall behaviour provides a window into the base of their dense psychology from which they reference all incoming information and outgoing behaviour.  But if having a low or high frequency doesn’t depend on ignorance or intelligence, what does it depend on?  

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Why People Throw Their Friends Under The Bus

There is a video on the internet showing two girls walking along the road.  From the body language, it is clear to see that they are close friends, as they walk and talk casually as BFF’s do.  In the next moment, however, a bus travels along the road in the opposite direction, when friend no.1. has the sudden compulsion to forcefully shove her mate sideways across the path, to land within inches under the wheels of the bus.  It was a near miss that made every viewer gasp. 

In less fatal manoeuvres, I’ve seen lads pull their friend’s shorts down for moments of public humiliation. I’ve known girls to lift up their friend’s skirts and tops to reveal to any viewer all that is preciously private and off limits.  I’ve seen people so precarious with their friend’s personal safety and wellbeing, that I suspect they are secretly harbouring deep-seated resentment toward them.   When questioned, all those exhibiting this kind of behaviour give the same response – ‘that they are only joking’.   But many a true feeling is revealed in the guise of just having a laugh, and there is nothing funny about hurting anyone, let alone ones buddy.  So why do people throw their friends under the bus?

In search of an explanation for this shocking behaviour you may use your frontal cortex, the area of the brain that applies rational reason – and therefore fails to explain irrational acts.  To see what is really going on here, we need to look at the unconscious part of the mind and the powerful forces that move people.  Wherein we always find the real reason why people behave as they do.

It is true that ‘actions speak louder than words’.  If we asked friend no.1. to explain she would probably say that she loved her near-death friend, that she had no intention of harming and certainly not killing her.  Friend no. 2. would be justifiably suspicious, spun into the shock of disbelief, confusion and profound mistrust.  When studying body language, however, the general name given to all the micro-behaviours that reveal true intention, we are provided with a clear and unambiguous direct window into the real motivations for human behaviour.

There are a variety of reasons why people throw their friends under the bus – literally or metaphorically.  At the everyday end, friend no. 1 types are harbouring feelings of not being good enough, that parts of their own identity are inadequate or fake.  In spontaneous moments they are trigger-happy to desperately grasp the opportunity to humiliate or offend their friend, in favour of the irresistible prize of albeit temporary social approval.  Such are the mechanisms of shallow personalities that succumb to impulses to easily put their friend down in a futile and distasteful attempt to put themselves up.  Desperate for scraps of attention to pacify a relentless and burning desire for any flicker of affection or approval.   In muddier psychological waters, are the tentacles of jealousy, unresolved childhood wounds, and an inability to manage their own bipolar forces.

Friends like these can be thoughtlessly hurtful, always protesting that they didn’t mean to cause harm, that they were only having a laugh … that you need to lighten up!   But people who throw others under a bus, whether actual or metaphorical are dangerous.  In the very depths of their unconscious is revealed an inability to manage the impulsive tensions in their own mind, and maintain central control in the throws of extreme internal anxiety.  With a mind that consciously or unconsciously intends to project its own insecurities out onto others; in jokes, in words, in subtler forms, but always in observable behaviours, only one consideration remains – With friends like that, who needs enemies?

Carole Sawo

2 Great Reasons for Studying Psychology

BY CAROLE SAWO


The inside of the human mind is a truly fascinating place.  Psychology is the umbrella name for the study of mind and behaviour, and the discipline falls into the category of science.  In order for anything to be classified as scientific, it has to be observable, measurable, replicable.  Some might argue that Psychology is not a science, as we cannot see the inside of somebody’s mind with the naked eye, that no one can know what is in there or how it functions.  But it is easy to see inside the mind.  When we watch what somebody does on the outside, we can know what is happening on the in, where the behaviour first originated – in the mind.

The Mind, often referred to as ‘the seat of human consciousness’, is the intellectual component that enables us to be aware of and experience our world. It is that with which we mentally process stimuli and that which enables us to think, reason, plan and make sense of the world around us. Some people believe the mind is the ‘thinking-feeling’ element of what we know as ‘I’ but there is no conclusive definition of what the mind is. Similarly, there is no collective definition of what ‘normal’ is.

Brains, give-or-take, are roughly the same.  They can be analogised with a car.  Even though the roads are full of different shapes, sizes, makes and models, cars require similar parts and can be seen to work in similar ways.  Just as the brain contains different capacities, it too requires similar parts to work in similar ways, all tucked neatly beneath the hood of the skull.

From neural development, illusions, memory, child development, through to social behaviour, there are many great reasons to study Psychology.  The two greatest reasons being that in our research we can (1) know what is happening in someone else’s mind, and (2) make sense of what is happening in our own. 


Live Events: 

Introduction to Psychology (5 Week Course)
24th July to 21st August 2019

Introduction to Psychology is for anyone wishing to explore the fascinating enigma that is the human mind. Beginning with an overview of brain and neural anatomy, you will explore the concepts of Illusions, Processing of Sensory Information, Memory & Forgetting, Stereotyping, Prejudice & Discrimination, Psychological Learning Theories, Social Psychology and The Psychology of Aggression.


Live Events: 

How to Say No  (Seminar)
9th July 2019
 
Are you a people-pleaser?  Even if you think you are assertive and good at saying no, this is for sure a thoroughly revealing seminar that has the capacity to change lives.  If you constantly say ‘yes’ when you really want to say ‘no’ and are exhausted and frustrated as a result, this seminar is a must for you.  With an empowering return on your inner resources, discover the secrets of how to deal with unexpected requests and emotional traps – and how to assert the power of saying no.


Online Study:
 
Dream Analysis 

 We go to sleep every night and often we dream, but why do we dream?  Is the dream just an experience of random images or is there a purpose for dreaming?  When dreams seem so irrational, do they have any relevance to our waking life and do the characters and images that appear have any real significance?   When the mind is very active and conscious during the day, how and why is it that when sleeping and calm at night, a part of our mind is still so active, even though consciousness is not?


Top 10 Hebe College Related Courses

1.    Forensic Psychology for Beginners
2.    Mind Control
3.    The Psychology of Depression
4.    A Peaceful Mind
5.    How to Meditate
6.    Criminal Profiling
7.    Thought Alchemy
8.    Anxiety & the Way to Beat It!
9.    How to Write a Book
10.  Panic Attacks & How to Manage Them

 

Simplify It!

This year is going to be a good year.  That’s not just my intuition speaking.  This is the year of the courageous and faithful Dog and that number eight on the end symbolises completeness and prosperity – on its side, it is the sign of infinity.

Having worked exceptionally hard behind the scenes last year, to upgrade the website and prepare technologically, over the New Year I wrote my New Year’s plan … and I’m excited.  With my favourite Pointer Sisters’ track playing over in my head, I’m genuinely pleased to let you know that this year will see the beginning of my video tutorials being launched free on Youtube, along with other loads of exciting online courses being designed for you.  I have also scheduled some really fascinating in-class seminars, starting on 8th February with Create The Life You Want, followed by Self Esteem, Emotional Intelligence, Animal Whispering, Spirituality for Beginners and Criminal Profiling.

Having thoroughly enjoyed my yearly clearing out and burning all the old paperwork from last year, the decks are well and truly swept and polished and I’m ready to go.  With an eye always on the outside world mirroring the inside world, being clutter-free and able to breathe is a great feeling … which leads me to this question for you.  What do you need to eliminate this year?

A happy life is not a life rammed with appointments, obligations, and energy draining people who give nothing back in return.  It’s a life of all round fulfillment in which the message is not to do more, but to do less.  It’s a year not to gather more, but to filter out, wean it off and let it fade. Now is the time to close major chapters and release. This is the year to simplify your life.

All good things,
Carole Sawo

Paradise Found

It was an idyllic Sunday afternoon, with great company, in glorious weather, with a packed lunch on a secluded beach.  Having walked a few miles through the woods, the sight, sound and feel of the stunning coastline were breathtakingly beautiful and welcome.   After a short amble along the sand, taking in the spectacular landscape, we settled our rucksacks on blankets near the roots of huge fallen trees and began tucking into flasks of coffee, sandwiches and cake.  The gentle warm air on our faces, the children exploring the shoreline, the pillow-white clouds in a crystal blue summer sky.  All in paradise was blissful.

Everyone had training shoes on – except for someone who insisted, even in 30 degrees, to wear her fur-lined wellies.  What can I say?  You never know when a grass snake … they were comfortable … well anyway, I’d covered them over with my jeans.  As I sat gazing out along the beach, the un-wellied ones went down to the shoreline and began digging for fossils.  Shortly after a large dinosaur’s egg, in the form of an impeccably shaped stone was found and we all marveled at the abilities of nature to perfect it. 

With two tiny gurus in the party, with minds more curious than cats, a philosophical conversation about the dynamics of nature began.  ‘Nature is different from humans’, said tiny person number 1, ‘because humans can negotiate out of a competition but nature never does’.  Goodly Lordy.  I smiled visibly as I honestly took in a huge breath of air at the magnitude of fathoming in such an adorable little Plato, I mean human, no, I mean Plato.   

Ego flailing slightly in wellies, I decided to up the philosophical-ometer, ‘do you think’, I heard my eg… self saying, ‘if you took all the people off the earth, this would be the Garden of Eden?’  It stumped them for a millisecond.  ‘Well’, said tiny person number 2, ‘I don’t know about that, but I know about magic’.  Oh Jeez … magic, he said, well he really was a relative of mine.  I was intrigued.  ‘What do you know about magic?’, I asked completely fascinated by the prospect of the answer – and I wasn’t disappointed.  ‘Magic is just science unexplained’, he said casually, as two dragonflies breezed about his head.   It was game, set and match.  I’d gone to the beach with Gandalf.

Leaving the blankets and mostly eaten tuck up the beach, we decided to search the shoreline for more dinosaur eggs.  Following up the party, I suddenly let out a shriek as my left leg slipped on the sandy mud.  Everyone turned around to watch as I slipped again and again like a drunken duck on ice.   Only I wasn’t on ice, I’d only had coffee and I wasn’t sure I’d slipped, in fact, it felt like something had a really strong grip around my ankles.  With my feet in seeming concrete, I fell forward at the waist, lost my left welly and landed on my knees in the mud.  Polite giggling was heard as two loving hands reached forward to help me up.  My left un-wellied leg was free but my right was still sinking, and sinking fast.  I had two sudden thoughts of panic shoot through my mind, the first that my right leg was being sucked under fast and the second, that the others were unaware that I wasn’t slipping but was being pulled down.

Giggling subsiding, as the mud reached the top of my welly I knew that I had to make a split-second decision and I removed my right foot from the boot and was pulled to safety in my socks.  Squatting down, I leaned out just before the boot went right under the mud and I heaved with all my might to pull the welly back out.  ‘That’s quicksand’, said Plato, as I tried to resurrect myself as the adult.  ‘No, that’s quick-mud’, said Gandalf … and they were both right. 

What is Paradise then?   A garden of plenty?  A rucksack of food and coffee?  A sunny beach on a Summer’s afternoon?  Or the company of those we love, who, when we suddenly fall under, pull us back up out of the mud and the mire?  Paradise is all of these things.  Throughout our lives, it is found and lost and found again.  As we left the beach, Gandalf found another dinosaur’s egg, perfect except for a slice missing and he handed it lovingly to me.  ‘Look’, he said pointing to the missing part, ‘this egg is yours to remind you that you might lose a part of yourself when you go through an experience but that will help you in the future, because if you have that experience again, you will know how to get through it and survive’.  Out of the mouth of babes and sucklings indeed!

On a beach on earth, I still think wellies are a good choice, particularly since walking back to the car without socks, that fur lining came in comfortably useful.  And in a garden in heaven, I personally don’t think any snakes ever existed, only the shadowy flickers of fear that one’s paradise might be lost.  But Paradise, I think, as my socks dry on the line, is recognising you have a mind full of coping strategies, albeit derived from experience, a heart from a good place, the company of angels on earth and the wisdom to know that everything is going to be OK.

May your paradise be found.

Carole

Phoenix Lives

BY CAROLE SAWO

Early one morning, I awoke to the sound of falling rubble coming from within the chimney-stack.  In the twilight of dawn, I put on my nightgown and crept downstairs to explore.  Upon entering the lounge I heard the sound of fluttering wings coming from the fire-hearth, wherein I found a very dishevelled blackbird gripping desperately onto the soot-covered grate; its wide eyes gleaming in the dimness of a heavily curtained room.  The blackbird seemed as startled to see me as I was to see it, and I wondered how best I might pick it up without frightening it further.  For a moment I considered a cloth and was just about to open the curtains, when from apparently nowhere I remembered a piece of useful information – birds always fly towards the light!  As quickly and as silently as I could, I by-passed the curtains and instead opened the front door.  In an instant the blackbird flew out into the new morning sun, but in nothing like an instant did I realise the profundity of that event until some time later.  Let alone appreciate the intuitive wisdom of knowing when to open, or when to leave some curtains closed. 

Of all the hours, months, and years that I had spent studying, it was the incident with the blackbird in which I had perhaps learned the most.  In one moment it had flown carefree in the early morning sky when in the next it had fallen into the blackest hole from within which it must have thought there was no escape.  Being unable to spread its wings in order to return to the former blue skies of freedom, the blackbird had crash-landed inelegantly, and most probably painfully, onto the charred embers of a thankfully cold fire.  After a moment of apprehension at the new sensations that must have bombarded its senses, it sprang by natural instinct and flew straight out of the open door, toward the light of a new day. The symbolism within such a seemingly small event over time lit up like a hologram.  In pure synchronicity, the blackbird revealed something so utterly amazing and completely obvious that I nearly missed it.  It had shown me the archetypal pattern of a definitive flight-path.  A pattern that traced the circular blueprint of everything; of man, of a spirit, of reincarnation and re-birth – of life!  It was that which I had found written into every teaching, that necessarily involved a descent into darkness, fire, light, and resurrection; all of which preceded a spiritual ascension and conscious evolution.  It was not only the clumsy capers of a blackbird that I had witnessed that morning but the structured flight of the mythical phoenix, forever rising from the flames of purification.  Before me too, illuminated the fundamental process of chemical transmutation.  Though more, much more than that, the blackbird had shown me the spherical journey of a dearly beloved soul, Heaven’s own alchemical vessel capable of extraordinary transformation – it had shown me the flight-path of us.

As the blackbird fell down the chimney, it may have grasped as we often do in life, for a handle, lever, or brick on which to hold.  But chimneys, like life, are designed circular for a very good reason.  Had the blackbird found a temporary ledge upon which to perch, somewhere between the light above from which it could not return, and the darkness below that seemed its only terrifying option, then it may have, as we often do, gotten stuck in the tunnel of its own fears.  Getting stuck in the chimney is to us the equivalent (and precursor) of a potential illness; at first in the mind and then in the body.  In response to a life event, we easily become disorientated, frightened, lost, unstable.  In panic we try to go back to the familiarity of yesterday but cannot and neither are we able to move on to tomorrow.  We feel paralysed, helpless, trapped, vulnerable and so we seek ledges upon which to stabilise, people on whom to frantically cling.  Most of which are only plasters of temporary solution that we desperately hope will never come off, though we inevitably find that they do.  In pain, we seek a hero, an idol in the external world to fill the void in the internal one.  When in truth the only hero that can rescue or save us, is the one that lives forever within.  We have lost touch with the saviour on the inside, and that is the real problem we all face today.  For many, ‘within’ is the absolute last place they would ever think, or rather, would ever want to look.  Even if given a map of their internal world and a way out of the material maze by celestial satellite navigation.  Directions to ‘go within’ can seem irritatingly futile when everything on the outside appears to be falling apart.  But a solution is always found in the problem and if the problem is in the inside, then there too is the solution.

Tumbling straight down the chimney without any option, the bird would have been undoubtedly afraid.  My lounge with all its material stimulants could never have vibrated at the frequency of freedom, no matter how much I had sought to cleanse it.  Like us, the blackbird fell awkwardly into darkness, though fortunately, it had landed into a cold fire.  But not all descents are into cold fires, as we and the phoenix can testify, but then again, neither are they supposed to be.  Since it is often in the fires of our apparent private hell, that not only our eyes but our hearts and minds might be opened.  Where ‘no-ledge’ for the ego yields knowledge for the Self.  And where our souls may be ever more purified, even if the timing between furnace and flight seems unbearably painful and unfairly extended.  It is there in the cooling embers and light of a new day, that we may find not just the cinders of carboniferous charcoal, but the essence of the carbon-arc coalesce.

No-one wants to fall down that far in life, but we do.  Descents are just part of the process of evolution: of a mind, a heart, and a soul.  In the fall into my lounge, the blackbird may have learned a very important lesson that day, if only not to perch on chimney tops.  Having passed through a cycle of re-birth, perhaps it had emerged better learned, more awake than before, and maybe even a little wiser.  Were the embers hot, it is possible the blackbird’s physical life may have ceased to continue on, though I am absolutely sure that its spiritual life still would have?  ‘Phoenix moments’ are not just for birds, but for anything that experiences life.  On Earth is where we do the work of transformation, where every external war reveals only a war in the internal world, projected out in an effort to disown it.  It is where we negotiate the hidden agendas in our own hearts and minds, where we hopefully strive not for a hostile take-over, but a diplomatic resolution attained more easily when grace has been invited in.  In descents, we are called to ask fundamental questions about our realities and ourselves – in ‘phoenix moments’ we may find the answers.  Incarnations do not always require that we physically cease, they require that we metaphysically shed our old feathers of yesterday, in order that we may grow stronger wings for tomorrow’s flight.  They challenge us to let go of inherited, out-dated unconscious belief structures, all in order for a conscious evolution and unified spiritual enlightenment.  ‘Phoenix moments’ force us to bear the pain of the fires of purification, in order for some essence of wisdom to be revealed; a process that can only serve to enhance and fine-tune our flight-paths through this life, and eventually, our ascension through the ethers back home. 

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