The Cauldron
For emotional transformation and Self-Love
There is a lot more talk about self-care and self-love these days than i recall growing up. When i realized i needed this help for myself, i went on the journey. i developed a certain discipline of attending to my “self” on a daily basis which included monitoring my thoughts and a practice of gratitude. i share this journey and practices in a workshop called “Self love to superheroism”.
If we seek enlightenment, it demands more. Enlightenment is about SELF love. Self with the capital “S” and not because it’s at the beginning of this sentence. Talking about “The One”. Yes, that “Self”, vs. the individuated self most of us i-dentify with.
To truly love the Self requires we desire “Liberation”. For all of you spiritual beings out there who practice yoga, liberation is the true goal of yoga and tantra anyway. It’s been said, “if it’s not about liberation, it’s not tantra”.
Liberation, in this context, is spiritual enlightenment. It is recognizing that you are the Self. For many people that is unfathomable. For others it is intellectual. Perhaps some of us have had a glimpse, a taste. Enlightenment is about having that be your new default state of being. Where the realization is an abiding experience not a one-time peak experience. For those who have had a taste, part of your insight should have been the recognition that enlightenment is a state and a possibility within this lifetime. If we have learned to love our “self”, the next step in spirituality is learning to love “The Self”.
So, what do we need to do?
Alchemy. Transformation. Society has been set up in a way that does not serve us - on sooooo many levels. The discipline required will perhaps seem oppressive to those not ready. That’s ok. Adopt one practice, then keep adding until you have a robust routine.
We need to purify our heart-minds. How do we do this? Keeping the “mind” (heart-mind) always on the Divine.
The first time i remember hearing that was within my 3 years of studying the lessons from Paramahansa Yogananda. It had a transformative effect on me yet now, 18 years later, i am realizing he was being literal not poetic or metaphorical.
i recently created a post about what the spiritual discipline schedule might look like for a serious aspirant (as prescribed by Dr. Muata Ashby). His list included practicing ethics (in the Indian system Yamas and Niyamas, in the Egyptian system MAAT), breathing, chanting (mantra - instead of that song stuck in your head that keeps you duality or seprate-self focused).
Dr. Ashby makes quite a point that spiritual or elevated personalities at the level of enlightenment are gentle spirits who may still feel fetters but who no longer react with anger. If this is true, and this is an integral part of the path, then it is some of the tantric teachings which can help with this. Muata places a lot of importance on following MAATian philosophy and allowing for a more intellectual dissolution of emotions that the practice of it supposedly encourages. Silence is an important teaching tool given within MAAT. This is important and something i am personally going to be working on instead of spiritually bypassing with the excuse of identifying with “fierce Goddess” forms.
What is fierce is feeling, vs. reacting. The tantric teachings allow us to build a strong energy body by providing tools to allowing us to feel what is still bothering us, “not digested”, and allowing that process to take place. So we use our imagination in a positive way vs. allowing it to spin off into blame-game stories.
One such specific technique, i engaged with this morning, was to drop the story around an undigested emotion. We then leave ourselves with the raw form of the feeling and allow ourselves to experience that. We then can visualize, as vividly as possible, what it informs our mind it might look like. We then, according to the visuallization i just engaged in, create it’s opposite “look” and allow both to alchemically be stirred in a visualized cauldron. We allow the feeling of balance to come into us. This is a positive way of using our imagination (keeping our mind on the Divine) thus purifying heart-mind in an effort of Self-Love. There are other techniques. Find a teacher or stay tuned for future videos / teachings from me. This technique is simple yet complicated perhaps in a short post. My go-to teaching is “All things through Nature”. Go breathe with or confide in a Tree. That too will help significantly and quickly.
Finally, i would like to say (about the image i chose) that the upward facing star is symbolic of the idea of spirit ascending. Negative assumptions aside, the downward facing star is symbolic of embodiment.
i write this after finishing a tantric visualization to balance emotional energy using the idea of an alchemical cooking pot, a cauldron. If you feel unnerved for any reason, just remember that some of those who were accused as witches were simply Earth-loving beings who we might call herbalists today.
