You are a spiritual being having a human experience. What exactly does that mean? It means that you were born bipolar. Yes, you are bipolar by nature, meaning you are characterized by two opposing natures. This isn’t necessarily a negative thing. However, it is the root of many of your problems. Let me explain…
Spirit Self
Your life force or what I refer to as “spirit” is eternal. It never dies. Its nature is to express and expand itself into its most authentic version. It is your essence that is always connected to source energy, divine intelligence, or God. This universal perfection goes by many names and every culture around the globe recognizes it.
This source energy is infinite wisdom. You possess it and can access it whenever you want. In fact, you are immersed in it – swimming in it, much like a fish swimming in a bowl of water and not realizing he’s wet. Infinite intelligence is everywhere. It is simply a thought away.
“Begin to see yourself as a soul with a body rather than a body with a soul.” – Wayne Dyer
It is the quiet place that you tap into for guidance, information, clarity. This is why people practice prayer, meditation, and yoga, so they can more readily access this divine intelligence, and more importantly, hear it.
Animals and nature are completely plugged into this divine intelligence and compelled by it. Birds know where to fly, grass knows how to grow, wild animals know how to survive. They don’t require GPS, board meetings, instructions, prayer, or meditation. They know.
Your spirit self also knows. You know the truth about people and situations. Your intuition is on the job for you. It constantly receives information in its purity and shows itself via aha moments, bright ideas, subtle knowings, gut feelings, voices, visions, and dreams.
However, our culture does not respect intuition, nor does it teach its brilliance. As a result, disconnect happens when you don’t listen or you don’t want to believe what you know to be true and act against your higher knowing. Your spirit self operates from a higher vibration that always guides you in the direction of truth, goodness, and love. It is subtle, gentle, kind but also very persistent. It will not let you off the hook of your truth.
“The intuitive mind is a sacred gift and the rational mind is a faithful servant. We have created a society that honors the servant and has forgotten the gift.” – Albert Einstein
When you ignore or deny your higher knowing, you become out of spiritual alignment. And this is what causes the majority of your pain.
Physical Self
In this human incarnation, your spirit body is housed inside your physical body. This automatically grounds you the earth and all that goes with it. Your physical body and spiritual body are always in communication. There is an undeniable mind-body-spirit connection and one most definitely affects the other.
Since you are having a human experience, you are required to participate in all things earthly, such as eating, sleeping, and paying bills. Forming a family, enjoying the arts, community involvement, and playing in nature is also part of your human experience, should you choose.
Since you, unlike animals and nature, are wired with free will, you can choose your destiny. You can choose to heed your spiritual callings or ignore them. You can be, do or have pretty much anything you choose.
With this free will comes its partner, the ego. The ego’s job is to protect and serve you so that you conform nicely to your cultural beliefs, thoughts, and fears. Your ego keeps you in sync with your free will, whether good, bad, enlightened, or ignorant. Your ego keeps you right – justifying and adjusting reality to fit your version of it.
Many of you habitually make your choices from your human perspective. Instead of tapping into your higher knowing, you look to your neighbors, media, and other earthly influences for guidance. Many of you do what your culture, family, or society says you should and you find yourselves unhappy and unfulfilled. This puts you in spiritual misalignment and because your body and spirit are always communicating, spiritual misalignment will typically manifest itself physically in the form of illness or disease.
Thank God for illness and disease! They are simply physical signs that we are out of alignment – physically and more than likely, spiritually. Many people believe that physical illness is our body turning against us – that we are somehow broken, being punished, and doomed to suffer a lifetime. Illness and disease are temporary situations begging for our attention, that when ignored become chronic and life-threatening.
“Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.” – Sigmund Freud
Disease and illness are sometimes simply environmental, which means we need to change our environment, eating habits, and other external conditions that make us sick. Whatever the cause, illness, and disease are calling us to change something. And once we make the changes, if we make the changes, healing can occur.
Chakras
Since you are an energy being, your energy radiates inside and outside of your body. Again, it is your life force. The outer energy field is referred to as your aura. The inner energy centers are labeled “chakras,” Sanskrit for “spinning wheels.”
If you take a look at your chakra system, it represents your bipolar nature perfectly. The upper three chakras represent your divinity and the lower three chakras represent your humanity. It is the heart chakra that is the bridge between your opposing natures. The heart is the seat of your soul and where you first receive psychic information.
Integration is the name of the game
Our human nature is a big fan of taking sides – labeling things good or bad, black or white. We are bipolar, after all. It is easy for us to judge our divinity as good and our humanity as bad. I believe it is much more complicated than that and consequently have learned to become an impartial observer to see the intelligent design of it all. Some days are easier than others. However, the truth that brings me back to center is that we can’t have one without the other, at least not in this lifetime. It is the contrasting moments of our split natures that make us appreciate who we are and the options available to us.
For example, in order to operate consciously from a higher perspective, we must feel safe and have our physical needs met. We must be grounded. Then we can enjoy our prayer time and see the magnificence of nature because we’re not thinking about our survival. It’s more challenging to operate from a place of love and compassion if your basic needs are not met.
I believe our greatest challenge is to integrate both sides of our nature gracefully. Truth, brilliance, and clarity are divine traits. Pleasure, enjoyment, connection are human traits. They are all gifts. They offer us guidance as to what we like, dislike, what we stand for – essentially who we are.
To integrate both sides, we have to become aware of both sides and develop daily practices to nurture and grow these aspects of ourselves. Most people are aware of the physical benefits of daily exercise, eating well, and showing up to work. We are free to move around, feel good, pay our bills and play on our days off.
Our spirits require the same daily attention. What do you do to nurture your spirit? How do you check in with yourself? Prayer, meditation, exercise (getting in the zone), spending time in nature – just slowing down – are great ways to nurture your spirit.
To sum it up, I believe our journey as spiritual beings having this human experience is beautifully illustrated by the Temperance card of the Tarot deck. With one foot in the water of spirit and one foot on physical land, we constantly mix our human nature with our divine nature – creating a balance that works for us.
We can look to the daffodils for simplicity and ease of nature and take the path of least resistance to higher ground. We can enjoy that we are surrounded by beauty and feel safe that there is no shortage of guidance. When we become still, we can access infinite wisdom that lies within – that wisdom that unites our minds, bodies, and spirits – trusting that it is working in unison for us; never against us.
We are the alchemists of our lives. We get to decide our own proportions of humanity and divinity and the frequency of changing our focus on one or the other. Perfect balance is not possible, nor would it be any fun. Exploring and creating your unique rhythmic harmony is your dance and only your dance. Enjoy it and notice who chooses to dance with you!
