Excerpt from Exhilarated Life: Discovering Inner Happiness
In the Eye of the Dragon
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The dragon must die but to vanquish it, it must be lured from the cave
into the light. All this drama of heroes, damsels, dragons, heart, and
self, courage, and fear is the stuff of our daily life on Earth. Applying
the archetypes only facilitates in understanding the active energy of
these forces as they motivate or limit us from within, and as they
attract external circumstances and relationships to perpetuate and feed
the momentum of self-deception—the dragon.
We can all relate to the interplay of these forces in our personal evolution.
Whether we are born onto the sunny coast of California or the broken
streets of Beirut, our personal story unfolds and undulates in response
to internal and external influences. We are reactive or proactive, and as
we strengthen within, the forces without are mitigated. So, the dragon
we slay is the force of limitation on our personal evolution. And what
exactly are we limiting? What is our personal evolution? And how does
that impact on the world we live in?
My own learning began with a quest. It was a quest to avoid pain and
suffering and to live without fear. I wasn’t even thinking in terms of
happiness, creativity, and personal fulfillment in those days. I just wanted
to come up to a baseline. The actual circumstances are immaterial, as
the relevance lies only in the cumulative affect on my psyche and the
ultimate claim for release. I did not want to be another statistic in my
family of depression or suicide, or penitent to a moralistic belief. And
I certainly didn’t want that kind of influence on the children I was
bringing into this turbulent world.
Consequently, I have been a passionate student of all ways of healing.
Spiritual, energetic, nutritional, physical, and intellectual. My own
search for answers and the subsequent trip of healing, through tragedy,
betrayal and disillusionment into lightness, comprehension, and
reverence is the foundation of my vision of LightBeam and all aspects
of my life work and contribution.
I was a seeker for many years until I began to study the ancient
teachings of Patañjali and the Bhagavad Gita. They were very obscure
to me and my Western mind had great trouble in interpreting the
texts. However, my most beloved teacher, Gita, assured us that if we
followed the lessons in our own time and did not rush, understanding
would come. She also made a very portentous observation. She said,
“Just be aware that when you study sacred texts, your life will draw in
the circumstances to illustrate the lessons.”
That has been absolutely true and the way—though rough—has been
resplendent with growing awareness for the subtle and sublime Life
force that imbues every creature, rock, and star in this wide universe.
The more my understanding expanded, the less division there was
in this way or that way. This doctrine or that dogma. Life began to
express itself in a sense of extreme individuality and uniqueness—no
two snowflakes alike—and at the same time, the amazing unity and
interdependence of all living systems—molecules or galaxies. I found
confidence in my own voice humming my tune and delighted in the
collective voice of all who wished to sing along with me.
I began to use the mantra, “I create the world I want to live in and it is
populated with people I love and respect.” This is indeed unfolding and
that world is pretty small, but it is vibrant and full of color, laughter,
friendship, creativity, and accomplishment. I’ve lost my way a few
times, but as I described in The Dragon Dies and The Dragon’s Teeth,
those missteps become more evident and corrected to bring me back
to peace and confidence.
In this world of instant everything, we tend to believe that we can read
a book, take a course, visualize or will a state into existence. We can
most certainly be transformed by any of these. But the act of personal
evolution is a lifetime of awakenings and glimpses of all that we can
be. We then experience this awareness on all levels—body, mind,
emotion, soul, and then anchor it into our consciousness. It is in this
deep integration of healing on all levels that we truly affect the world
we live in.
Our Life’s purpose is to fulfill our own soul destiny. In this way we
are truly co-contributors of Life’s evolution. We are the very cells of
Life’s creative body. As we take in information, process it and express
it in our daily lives, we construct a world of deeper understanding,
interdependence, and inter-connectedness. We are manifestations of the
nature and the natural order of Life as surely as the trees and galaxies.
The difference—as far as we know at this moment in time—is that we
are conscious and can exert our conscious will over our actions and
processes.
While the natural world expands and evolves, ebbs and flows, rises
and falls on an ever-undulating course, we conscious beings affect
the expanding consciousness of the world. The collective emotion:
The evolution of happiness over despair, peace over war, care over
abuse. It is not difficult to see that the world is in chaos. There is
starvation, torture, war, decimation, pollution, greed, anguish,
suffering.
The dragon of our collective unconsciousness is wreaking
havoc. It’s breathing poison into our water, ash into our air, starving
our children, and singeing all our necks with the terror of uncertainty.
There is so much that people are doing to shift all this. Global prayer
vigils, exhortations to God, blogs by the trillions, political and social
activism.
But all this activity—passive and aggressive—misses the
whole point. The dragon grows in strength and power, not because
we are focusing our attention and giving it energy, but because the
dragon in our outer world is only the distraction for the dragon within
us. The little dragon that would be safe stays safe because we ignore it
to focus on the wrongs of the outer world. As long as we stay focused
on the evil, greedy conniving bastards of the—name it—banks,
pharmaceutical companies, governments, fishing fleets, fur traders,
deforesters, munitions producers, we are neatly caught in the net of
self-delusion.
In turn, the collective consciousness is displayed in the world around us.
I don’t know anyone who wouldn’t like to live somewhere beautiful—a
beach, the mountains, surrounded by love, and enjoying creative peace
and serenity. We look at the world and wonder who made this mess?
Clearly it is not our choice but here it is. The dragon of war, pollution,
genocide, disease and poverty feeds on our collective delusion, our
collective collusion to blame others, and it gets fat on our collective
doubt and uncertainty.
Inside the acorn is the entire imprint for the oak. Given the basic
conditions of clean water, fresh air, and nutrients from the earth, the
oak will flourish. Within the acorn lies all the oak can potentially
achieve. Drought and lightning may alter its shape, but within it
remains all it might be. Likewise, within us is all that we might be. If
we are to be a musician, we will hear or see music and be drawn to its
expression. Being human, our expression of our complete potential is
not only affected by environment conditions, but also by conditions
of consciousness.
As Life’s expression of conscious evolution, we are given the added
ingredient of will. We don’t automatically evolve to the highest
expression of our personal Self. We must choose to fulfill our highest
potential. Enter the dragon. The dragon is all that is not true about us
Before it outgrows the boundaries of our soul and leaps into the arena
of the collective conscious, it feeds and gets powerful on self-doubt.
And how are we relieved of self-doubt? By calling it out and looking
it right in the eye. When we have the courage to face our fears—and
sometimes we need help—we will see that they are not based on fact,
but on false beliefs, which have grown out of control and choke our
potential for a creative, healthy, and prosperous life.
Peace and love are our natural state of being; they are the stuff of our
heart’s desire. They are always there, within. Sometimes deep in the
cave, behind the fearsome dragon. Call the dragon out; see the lies
in its eyes of what you believe about yourself that is not true. Then
raise the daggers of all your talents, gifts, and goodness of who you
really are and slay it, now. Each time the voice within you breathes the
fire of doubt, shame, guilt, unworthiness; face it down with another
truth. Keep doing it until the dragon is silent. Then, puff! The dragon
becomes magical and when it rises (and it will), it will be your ally—
your reminder of who you really are!
When your heart is finally free from bondage, peace and love will fill
you to overflowing and then the pulse of the world will change at last.
~mh
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