We Americans use a lot of the world's resources. I've heard it said that it would take five planet earths if we were to provide all of humanity with the same amount of resources that Americans use. That is a pretty huge footprint. And it reminds me of the gluttonous way that a caterpillar ravages a garden just before it embarks on its transformation.
As a little tiny baby caterpillar hatches out from its egg case, it eats progressively more and more plant material. As the days and weeks pass by, it begins to consume many times its own weight per day. This leaves the plants it has been feasting on devastated. And the caterpillar begins to succumb to the need for a deep sleep. It prepares it's bower, camouflaged and hanging down from the boughs of the plants that have sustained its massive appetite. Protected in this dormant state, its outer shell hardens and the caterpillar becomes a chrysalis.
Now, this is where things get really interesting. The immune system of the caterpillar begins to be called into play. Rogue cells that have been lying dormant in the body of the caterpillar start arising. These are stem cells and they have an entirely different genetic makeup. The immune system of the caterpillar repeatedly kills these cells, but more and more of them keep arising. Soon the immune system of the caterpillar is overcome. Meanwhile, the stem cells, known as "Imaginal Cells," continue forming. As these imaginal cells proliferate, they begin to create a brand new animal, the butterfly. Slowly but surely the genes of the butterfly, which were there all along, replace those of the caterpillar and the metamorphosis is complete.
Those of us who have embarked on a journey of self discovery soon realize that change is the only constant in the Universe. Everything comes and goes. We see similar patterns of transformation throughout nature and the world. Infants become adults, frogs emerge from plump little tadpoles, mountains become hills, lakes become meadows and volcanoes arise from the molten depths of the earth. We learn to accept these changes and to move with them, rather than fight against them.
Sometimes we may have to tuck in for a long dark night of the soul, something rather like a chrysalis stage, in between our various metamorphoses. I find it helps to remember that Divine Creator has a hand in everything. We wouldn't want to kill a caterpillar, because then we wouldn't have the butterfly.
So, here in the Northern Hemisphere, during the longest nights of the year, it might be worthwhile to ask ourselves, “What have we been overindulging in? What are we resisting? What might we imagine?” Who have we been and who are we changing into? How is this occurring on both a personal level, and a global level? What kind of normal development would we collectively like to see after our embryonic stage is complete?
These might be some nice questions for all of us to meditate on. Who knows what beauty might soon begin to arise from the depths of our beings.
© Josephine Laing 2016
For the two or three weeks leading up to the Consciousness Cruise with the Institute of Noetic Sciences (IONS), I was getting progressively nervous about my presentation. Most of these folks are extremely well educated and they take their sciences very seriously. Often in conversation, it's not just which college degree they have, but how many PhDs they hold. So, speaking with my usual informality, throwing terms around like right brain and left brain, wouldn't wash well with this crowd. After all, the two hemispheres of the brain, though distinctly different are integrally interconnected and it's really not as simple as having an analytical side vs. an intuitive side.
I was near panic a few days before our departure, flooding myself with various articles and documents about psychic ability when my sweet husband calmed all my fears with a simple statement. He said to me, "They may be smart, really smart, but when it comes to an actual working experience of psychic ability, you are the authority here." With those words, I realized he was right. I calmed right down, got my ideas in order and relaxed about the whole thing.
The Institute of Noetic Sciences is a non-profit organization founded by Apollo 14 Astronaut Edgar Mitchell. As he and his fellow astronauts returned from their trip to the moon, he saw our earth, floating in the sea of space, and realized that all of his technological education and experience had not even begun to touch upon the depth of awareness that he felt in that moment. He had a knowing, a noetic experience, that we are all connected and that our world and the universe is conscious. When he returned to earth, he devoted himself to the Study of Consciousness and the collective transformation of our human potential.
Since the Institute's inception in 1973, IONS has blossomed into an international organization with community groups throughout the world. For several years now, a number of the community groups have been enjoying Consciousness Cruises, as a forum in which to share ideas that can make a positive difference in the world. It was almost like attending a series of TED talks, while floating through the Inside Passage, those multitudinous islands off the west coast of Canada and Alaska.
As with all IONS events, there is a focus on the science behind recognizing that we are all a part of an interconnected whole. The motivating force is to create a shift in consciousness worldwide, so that we are inspired to take
action to help humanity and the planet thrive. The researchers and support teams at IONS conduct, advance, and broaden the science of what connects us so that we can all reach
new understandings about the nature of reality and our extended human
capacities. This then empowers people to apply conscious awareness in their personal lives, in healthcare, in business and in education using the real-world tools that are created from what is learned.
There were a number of presenters on the ship and all were great. We heard from luminaries in the world of consciousness research and change like Rupert Sheldrake, Jill Purce, Peter Russell and Cassandra Vieten. Rupert spoke of the dogmas in science that are limiting our worldview. Jill demonstrated how our voice and working with our family patterns can free us. Peter explored our transformation of consciousness through meditation and Cassandra gave us details of Edgar Mitchell's and IONS vision.
We also enjoyed talks about healing violence through wholeness with Douglas Bonar, embracing our wake up calls with Peter Hesse, mimicking nature's patterns for spiritual growth and evolution with Curtis Adney and implementing paradigm shifts through understanding indigenous consciousness with Milt Markewitz. These along with a host of other brilliant presentations and healing demonstrations made for a remarkable journey.
We humans are always looking for ways to expand and improve
our knowledge. And this can come to us through the advancement of our powers of perception. So often we are
taught what to learn, not how to learn. And just as the electron
microscope helped us to understand our world better, so can our other enhanced
tools of perception. It has been my experience that the extended capacities of our human
minds are vastly under explored and under appreciated. So this is why I like to teach how to develop our psychic abilities. As we learn more about our extra sensory
perceptions, we can create more knowledge. And knowledge helps us to evolve
and grow.
We all did a survey before our departure to see which talks would likely be the most popular and thus well attended. Fortunately mine scored very highly. So I was given one of the prime times in the really big room on the first day, just before lunch. It was while we were passing through a particularly beautiful part of the inland passage with snow covered peaks and glaciers reaching down to the ocean. We did the final exercises for my talk up on deck with the cool Alaskan Air and bright blue skies punctuated with the mountain tops on either side of us.
Of course everyone had extraordinary psychic connections because we all are already psychic. We are born that way. We just need a little nudge to help us realize it. And that is what I did in my talk. I gave us lots of little nudges with colorful stories from my life, designed to open our minds. I then punctuated these with simple little exercises that (loosely speaking) opened our right brains. My presentation was called, "Wake Up Your Psychic Ability," and that was exactly what happened. And everyone loved it.
With my talk all done and over with, right at the start, I was free to enjoy myself fully for the duration of the cruise. I swam in the pool which was filled with icy cold Alaskan ocean water and got chilled to the bone every day for an hour at a time. It was fabulous and so healing. Nothing can jump start your health quite like really, really cold water. Frank and I had fun on the water slides and warmed up afterward in the saunas and steam rooms. And the food was incredible. They had an excellent Indian chef on board and you could order whatever you wanted. I loved the appetizers, the soups and salads, and would sometimes have two or three of them instead of choosing a main dish.
Then there were the shore excursions. We saw Victoria by night in a horse drawn trolley. We walked through a forest to come to a large hand hewn cedar plank tribal clan house and visited the many Tlingit totem poles there. But the highlight of the trips for me was the dog sled ride.
The Alaskan Iditarod and other racing dogs need weight training exercise during the summer months. Pulling a wheeled cart with four tourists and a musher on board is an excellent way for them to get in shape. And these dogs LOVE to pull. They can hardly wait to go. When the hand brake is released, the cart lurches forward amidst a cacophony of yips and eager barks. We went racing through the deep forest with the dogs bounding ahead, pulling left and then right around the turns as we whisked along the wooded trail. Before and after our ride, we got to meet and pet the dogs who were all so sweet and welcoming. And after our wild ride was complete we were invited to meet the puppies. In order to help them become socialized, all of the puppies needed holding and petting. So we were blessed with face licking and hair biting as they expressed their affections and we all delighted in their playfulness and personalities.
We all had a truly wonderful time. And in the days that followed my talk, so many of the IONS group members came up to me and expressed their true appreciation for my presentation. They told
me that mine was their favorite and showered me with
compliments. It filled my heart with joy. I couldn't have been happier
with the outcome and I am still beaming over it all to this day.
© Josephine Laing 2016
Join Josephine as she shares a simple technique involving journaling that can help us to transform and change negative thought patterns into positive ones. This lets us stretch the envelope of our minds in order to embrace new ways of being that are more in accordance with our spiritual principles.
© Josephine Laing, 2015
One of my favorite types of meditation is the Guided Imagery Mediation. This type of meditation engages our image center or our imagination. It stimulates our clairvoyant function by activating our third eye. Meditations of this nature guide us through an idea or an image. When we do a guided imagery meditation, we can either listen to a prerecorded meditation or we can guide ourselves through the process using our own thoughts.
My first exposure to guided imagery meditation was with a prerecorded forgiveness meditation. This was on an audio tape that was made by Louise Hay, who wrote You Can Heal Your Life. I listened to this almost every night on my little tape player while I was healing from a painful and long term injury. Louise's gentle, loving voice, playing through my ear-buds, helped me to more easily manage the pain and often lulled me into sleep. In this meditation, she asked her listeners to imagine our parents as little children, to see them as innocent, to forgive them, to pick them up, hold them lovingly, and then place them right into my heart.
Another great teacher of this type of meditation is Shakti Gawain. She headed me down the path of guided imagery meditations with her remarkable book, Creative Visualization. I welcome you to discover for yourself this little book and the life changing wisdom within it for yourself. One of her readers said that it was like being led by the hand into a beautiful garden and being given a single flower, one after another, to marvel at and enjoy.
I'd like to share with you today a few of my favorite guided imagery meditations. The first one is the pink bubble technique. Take a minute to imagine a pink bubble, with your eyes either opened or closed. Place into the bubble any worrying thoughts you may have. Close the door on that bubble if there was one, and see the bubble lift off and start to float away. Let it float over the distant horizon, perhaps even over a mountain, and know that it has gone to its next, most highest placement in the universe for its transformation.
A dear friend of mine who has since moved to the east coast taught me about the healing modality of Regenesis. This is a technique where the practitioner imagines a beautiful blue light entering into each and every cell of the client's body. This is the light of regeneration. I have taken this idea and altered it slightly to create a wonderful guided imagery meditation for myself that I do every day. In it, I imagine the blue light of Divinity entering in through the crown of my head and igniting all of my cells, one by one. In just a few moment's time it fills my whole body with the loving light of my higher self. This guided imagery meditation is part of what I do when I clear myself before I do my clairvoyant healing work for a client.
Another beautiful guided imagery mediation is to imagine a golden disk or a golden halo over the top of your head. Let this halo be a filter. Your thoughts can come and go, but all the thoughts of others are naturally sifted away. This lets us really focus on being who we are in accordance with our original blueprint, our natural being, our true self.
I'll leave you with these few meditations to enjoy this week. May they serve you as well as they have served me.
© Josephine Laing, 2014
