LEsperance - Soul breathing: spiritual light and the art of self-mastery

For Amanda and Mikaela...
and for the youth of the human race
that will inherit the Earth

With Gratitude

We are all forever indebted to the higher realms of Creation and Light as well as the Spiritual forces of good that valiantly and tirelessly serve to sustain, uplift, and enlighten the denser realms of existence regardless of the deep roots of ignorance, manipulation, myth, and superstition that plague sentient, intelligent life. With thanks to all those who contributed to creating this book, especially my friend Jennifer Clarke, and also the talented group of Souls at Inner Traditions Bear & Company; thank you for giving authors a platform to help teach others.

Sometimes the most real things in the world are the things we cant see.

CHRIS VAN ALLSBURG,

THE POLAR EXPRESS

Authors Note

It is recommended that this book be enjoyed in the quietude of a natural outdoor setting, away from disruptive electromagnetic currents.

Figure I.1. Authors drawing of black-eyed Susan

INTRODUCTION

In his life he shuddered, seeing how much inhumanity there is in man, how much savage brutality lies hidden under refined, cultured politeness.

GOGOL, THE OVERCOAT

One fine afternoon, at the age of about twelve, I went out into a wild field behind our family home with a drawing pencil and a piece of paper. I sat down and quietly proceeded to draw a good rendition of a black-eyed Susan that poked its colorful head up amidst the tall grass (see figure I.1). In that eventful moment I had discovered something about myself. I was gifted with a natural proclivity for drawing. This discovery shocked, delighted, and also frightened me. I questioned from what source this creative ability had arisenand why?

I began to wonder how to best serve the creative talents that resided within me and what my responsibilities to the origin of this creativity would be. Being a reflective and philosophically minded youth, I felt the deeper inner wisdom and presence of a creative conscious Light within my very being as a part of me, and there was no separation between me and it. Thenas we all doI grew into the rigors of living and surviving in a competitive material world, exploring and navigating the cultural conventions that are unrelenting and so pervasive in this realm of existence. During the course of this exploration I remained perennially attracted to devoting a great deal of my time and thought to balancing the challenges of the material, mental, and emotional vistas of life while maintaining the original higher awareness of Spiritual Light in my life... and this has not been an easy task.

Exploring the various books devoted to religion, I felt that these were not all encompassingand for me, many of the prevalent religious treatises lacked true spirituality. True spirituality would include treating all sentient life with equality and reverence and honoring the Earth and the environment in which we live. It seemed as though there was no theological book on Earth that answered the perplexing questions or offered a true understanding of that which humanity has termed God.

Sensitive to the chaos in the world, I witnessed the struggle for basic human rights in the heat of July 1967 as I observed, with great concern, the riots in Detroit, Michigan, near to where I lived as a young child. And then America ran headlong into the threat of nuclear war with Russia and the great struggle for peace during the Vietnam War. I observed that society was rife with the denigration of various races of people, as well as irreverence for women and children. In addition to all of this, I observed environmental degradation and that drug and alcohol addiction served as a societal norm for escape.

In my youth I witnessed the lives of inspiring leaders that symbolized hope in America abruptly terminated as President John F. Kennedy, his brother Robert F. Kennedy, and Martin Luther King Jr. were all brutally assassinated one after the other. The troubling fact that a faction of warlike people promoting darkness, destruction, and war were degrading society and extracting too much from the Earth, rather than demonstrating responsible stewardship, haunted my consciousness to the point where I imagined that the floor would give way beneath my childhood bed.

During this period of time, the Detroit area reverberated with the best music in the world. The harmonic sounds of Berry Gordys Motown music and many others graced the airwaves and served to sooth the Soul. Great music isand always will bea cathartic and creative expression for hope and inspiration. The beneficial effect of harmonious music on the human organism is undeniable. It is not the expansive creative function of the mind, but the linear function of the mind and the dispirited, false ego that has polarized and plagued the true evolution of humanity, causing debilitating setbacks in the personal, social, and worldly arenas of life. Soul Breathing offers a comprehensive understanding that will assist humanity in transmuting the polarized thinking of the dispirited ego. The linear functioning of the distorted egos propensity to dominate and to sacrifice others for its own gain is witnessed in all areas of human endeavor.

As many people remain dedicated to the search for solutions to the numerous challenges in our world, we also see that people are unceasingly influenced to perceive as reality that which is not reality, rather than consulting the inner voice of the Soul Force that resonates with the intuitive stillness of the heart center. It was disappointing to discover along the way that a relatively small percentage of people are genuinely devoted to cultivating the inner voice that sustains and seeds higher Consciousness. Rather than becoming our own authority by cultivating the deeper wisdom of the inner Spiritual Light that guides human Souls, the majority of people have followed the lead of others who seek to manipulate and hypnotize people into being told who they are, what they should believe, what to do, and how to do it.

One day a dear friend, being a photographer, invited me to participate in a short film that he was making. I was to be one of perhaps a dozen or so people to be interviewed and asked one question: how to live? My response to this inquiry was that we must question, or double think, what is presented to us in society and cultivate creative ways of living through personal insight. When the short film was finished, my photographer friend, John Harding, selected his favorite response, which came from a French gentleman who stated, No one really knows how to live!

This statement provoked in me an alarming question: Why does no one really know how to live? The idea that this concept was an acceptable cultural condition struck me as being disturbing and quite dangerous. After all, have we not inherited thousands of years of philosophical writings and myriad religious treatises? Why has it taken the human family so long to come to an understanding of the axioms that define our existence? Why have so many centuries passed without implementing a true understanding of the essential knowledge that guides real human development?