LSD 1/2008 - Embracing Shadow - Unity in Harmony All that is

LETTER OF SPIRITUAL DIRECTION SUNDAY, JANUARY 20, 2008

Embracing Shadow By Willow Tequillo

Unity In Harmony All That Is

Dear New Breed Healers,

I realize that there is some discomfort being experienced within the community in regard to some of the changes happening within the community re: small groups, regional groups and the Domes.

I realize that it is difficult to experience the paradox of change and to remain steady as change occurs in our lives.

I would like to speak to how and why I have made these decisions and the ways in which I come to these conclusions. However, before this can be remotely discussed the following must first be addressed.

I am going to attempt to discuss this dynamic in several different ways. It is my hope that you will receive this in the heart intention of my desire for greatest unity in harmony. It is my hope that you will find a message in a language which speaks clearly to you and that you will consider with an open heart the concept that I am trying to speak to. This concept is called Unity in Harmony, All That Is. Sometimes speaking to all that is, we must speak to things which are really difficult. Today for me this is one of those really difficult things.

Part 1 - What I think I know

It is my hope that as we continue to travel upon the paths of our individual processes we learn to adjust and readjust to the constant growth of ourselves and others. As each of us grows our needs become different, as a community we must move to support without attachment. And when we inwardly experience our attachment, we must use discernment to discover whether or not we are acting out in dependency/codependency.

We must, while in the paradox of change and chance, honor the steady and give our attention to that which we are trying to develop and maintain. Here again we must consider our personal attachment to how it is ‘supposed to look’. It may help here to reconsider why we are on this spiritual path. Maybe we have found that our ego’s attachments have not served us in the discovery about our whole selves. The question is, now that I have gotten through the first two steps of my process, do I presume to think that ‘I now Know’ and therefore have the capacity to hold the staff and be a teacher of what I think I know?

As your teacher and spiritual guide, I am in deep consideration of the stumbling block before us. As I walk quietly and mindfully and watch each of our steps as we tread this most dangerous part of our path.

The danger which is before us is that of consumption of personal power. Personal power is ego’s greatest challenge. Our task is to experience life through the quality of Empowerment. Empowerment is ego highest experience of the divine quality power through the balanced and center of humility.

All qualities must move through the Supreme Quality of Humility in order to find center and balance.

Even truth can be destructive when not provided through humility experienced in true Honesty. Many people would fool themselves into thinking that they are being honest, when in truth, honesty can not be experienced unless it has moved through the quality of humility. Humility requires respect of self and others and has no room for personal deceit or communal deceit.

This is so, just as:

Joy can not be experienced through the lens of jealousy.

Part II – Attachment to Fear

Our attachments come in and can be experienced in many forms. Two things are sure and steady about attachment they are, dependency and codependency. Through our attachments we strive to control in either a passive aggressive nature or a frontal aggressive nature. Either experience is violent and experienced as the taking away of our own freedom and taking of another’s freedom.

A note on dependency and co-dependency.
Both dependency and co-dependency changes the chemical make up of our brains. In other words, when we are out of balance in our emotions, our emotions create chemical reactions to help balance out the disruptive experience. It really doesn’t matter whether we use chemicals outside such as alcohol, drugs or cigarettes. These chemicals may help alter our state of mind, but our reactions within the Emotional Body, have already begun the process of chemical reaction and destruction. Our emotions are the contact points for our Mental Bodies and Physical (Matter) Bodies. We give, receive and store energies of memory through the emotional body. This is why it is so important to understand our relationships of dependency and co-dependency.

Emotional sobriety requires first that we acknowledge our dependency/co-dependency upon FEARS.

  • Fears are emotions which result in anger or upset to motivate us into action.
  • Fears are our long time friends which have guarded us through times pain and suffering and have helped us to hide from the unsafe situations.
  • Fears charge us to jump into action.
  • Fears manifest as anger. This anger or upset can be ours or that of another.
  • Anger is aggression turned inward as passive aggression or outward as frontal forward aggression.
  • Fears are made up of feelings which have had no voice.
  • Fears create violence.

When the fear is ours, we find that we are addicted to our own chaos and often reel others into our chaos by setting up stages where dramatic events take place to keep the attention on what we want the attention to be upon. Therefore hiding in deceit that which we do not want the attention to be upon.

When we follow the chaos of another then we find that we are co-dependent upon another’s fear, meaning that we rely on another person to act out in anger so that we can soothe and satisfy.

Part III – Emotional Sobriety

Emotional sobriety is a balancing of emotions first by acknowledgement of our feelings.

Emotional sobriety is the personal examination of balancing of emotions first by acknowledgement of our feelings.

For instance: If a person says, “I am angry” and then acts out the anger, there is nothing substantive to consider, except that the person is acting out, without clarity.

This serves only the destructive nature of no voice. Violent rage currently being experienced in our world can attest to the destructive nature of no voice.
This is a good example of 4th world self discrimination in chaos.

Inner Feelings are the Substance of Emotion

If a person can get to the inner feelings (or substance of the emotion) then a shift into emotional sobriety can occur.

For instance if a person says, “I am angry because I experienced feelings of abandonment during our conversation”.

Consider how this takes the emotion of anger and gives voice to the feeling of abandonment. When we can give voice and circumstance to our feelings, acknowledgment is then experienced and resolution can be found.

A deeper and fuller conversation can be had with an empathetic understanding of our fear. This resolution can be experienced by both the person experiencing the emotion of anger and the feeling of abandonment, and the person who is listening and witnessing.

Inner Feelings are the Substance of Emotion

Change often ignites the fear friend. Listening to ourselves is the greatest gift that we can give to ourselves and others.

For instance, say that I am experiencing the Emotion of anger through my attachment (dependency/co-dependency) to competition.

If I can go within and ask why I am in competition with another, I may find that my emotions are based in feelings of jealousy. If I look deeper I may find that my feelings of jealousy are further connected to feelings of personal worth or worthiness.

I may find that I act out my own personal perception of worthiness in ways such as personal over extension, with the inner shadow saying ‘I’ve got to do more to live up to their expectations, or I’ll do nothing so they won’t expect anything from me. Or their wrong and I’m right.”

Always, this sense of personal unworthiness will attach it’s self in a 4th world self discriminating way of presumptive entitlement and self righteousness. 4th world self discrimination entices us into dualistic ideas of right and wrong, better and worse, competition as winners and losers, and grandiose ideas of self righteousness that I know more that you do, or you are better and I am worthless.

If I am locked into the 4th world view of duality, I can only see that the other is an over lord who makes decisions based upon what ever is going on for them at the time.

Part IV – 5th World – Self Discrimination

The part of the path that our community is currently in is about the 5th world ideas of self discrimination.

5th World self discrimination says,

  • I experience myself as a vehicle of the highest vibration of my personal qualities.
  • As I examine my self through my own dreams, intentions, motivations and actions, I come to know something about how ‘I discern and make choices’ and how these choices impose upon another.
  • My desire is in the highest vibration of my qualities and to act in action of those qualities for the unity of all life.

The path of the 5th world requires that we LET GO of ideas which are competition based. Competition leads to the demise of someone and the glorification of the other. Competition means that someone looses and is left out and is more important that another.

When I consider the pine tree which lives gracefully outside my office window, I see beauty. I do not hear it say, I am more beautiful than you, to the other trees. Nor do I hear, ‘you are more beautiful than me.’ I see it sit in unity with the other beings around it. It receives its support and wellbeing from the relations around it. It gives and receives through knowing the beauty in joy that it is. Natural Order implies the nature of things to live together in harmony.

Natural Order implies the nature of things to live together in harmony.

When the pine tree seeds through the development of the cone, we notice that it is its friend the wind which carries its seed to another place. This place may be the food for the critters, birds or bears or the soil of mother earth. The 5th world view of self discrimination embraces the idea of unconditional love. Unconditional Love requires that we be intentionally present within each moment. It is only here that we can discover that we are the creators of our destiny.

The concept of unconditional love is difficult because it brings about questions such as:

  • How do I care for another without being attached?
  • How do I invest in sustainability without my commitment saying it looks a specific way?
  • How do I allow myself to change and others to change while holding them?

Part V – Jealousy, the destructive force within community

I woke this morning from a dream of working with NBH. The entanglements of jealousy were ringing through my thoughts in how to speak to this within the community.

“Banishment from the tribe!” rang through my dreams hearing the voices and cries of the ancestors.

  • Jealousy creates competition.
  • Jealousy diminishes energy flow.
  • Jealousy creates separation in the voice of scarcity.
  • Jealousy creates better or worse than mentality.
  • Jealousy is deceitful and disguises itself as helpful, caring and self sacrificing.
  • Jealousy is motivated by envy.
  • Jealousy destroys the intentions of wholeness in order for one to feel whole.
  • Jealousy pretends to be generous and honest and reeks of the destruction of sabotage.”

And as I gained my senses and footing in the light of day, I pondered upon this night dream and knew that the time had come to speak clearly with direct focus upon this issue. And, to ask the community to clearly speak to this dynamic. And so with a heavy heart, I write this letter.

Dear New Breed Healers, our dearest community,

This is a difficult letter to write as it speaks to one of the most difficult qualities which exist, jealousy.

Jealousy is so difficult because it is embedded within the soul memory and is cancerous in its destructive force.

  • It destroys wholeness and all of its potential through the creative voice of competition, denial of another’s happiness, self righteousness, self sacrifice, envy and gossip.
  • Jealousy masks its self as friend, gives through deceptive generosity, and is consumed as poisonous fruit.
  • Jealousy poises itself in roles of authority and acts out in helplessness when its destructive pattern has destroyed its own creations.
  • Jealousy pushes another out by making others feel unworthy.
  • Jealousy feeds upon personal self deprecation.
  • Jealousy holds sacred ideas of breaking down and lives there.

Today I write, because I am highly concerned about the current jealousies which are infecting the growth potential of harmony in our community.

To be sure, everyone experiences jealousy at times. As a community we can surely address this when it comes up in small doses. It is not the small doses that brings about this letter.

My concern is for those who use jealousy as a quality to control self and others. Jealousy is a dependency addiction of attachment in ownership and self sacrifice.

Jealousy is a dependency addiction of attachment in ownership.

Let me be clear. WE do not own one another. No one person is more valuable than another, including but not limited to me. One region does not get more favors than the other. It is not about one region being better than the other. The attitudes of jealousy which support this thinking needs to end today. If I have in anyway supported or encouraged this thought, I deeply apologize and ask your forgiveness. What I know is that this jealousy is a fueled growing fire which is destroying trust within the community, it will end today or the community will end.

Three considerations for how this condition can be dealt with comes to mind. I am open to hearing other options.

Option #1:
Do a regional group trust project, where each person states:

  1. How jealousy has embodied them.
  2. Where they have experienced the jealousy of another.
  3. What jealousy feels like as a passive aggression.
  4. What jealousy feels like as frontal aggression.

Option #2:
Be honest with your regional group.

  1. State how you hold this quality sacred and how you use it.
  2. Ask the group for help in discernment and support of a higher Vibrational quality.

Option #3:
Have Willow state to your regional group who you are and ask the group to support you in working through jealousy.

Option #4:
Have Willow place you in a private anonymous group and have you work out your jealousies through personal discipline and healthy co-operation with each other.

Again, I am open to other suggestions.
As your Teacher and Spiritual Guide for the Community of New Breed Healers, I see only destruction of our community if this is not addressed immediately and pulled up by the roots.

The Buddhists say that there is only one sin, that is to take away the joy of another. Let me be clear and let your ears be open, Joy can not live where Jealousy leads.

Joy can not live where Jealousy leads.

Before choosing an option please do an ego/soul dialogue with the following questions.

  1. How does my jealousy take away the joy of another?
  2. How does my jealousy take away my own joy?
  3. How has my jealousy taken away the joy of another today?
  4. How has someone else’s jealousy taken away my joy today?
  5. How has my jealousy shielded me from fully caring for another?
  6. How has my jealousy shielded me from fully caring for myself?
  7. Do I choose this jealousy?
  8. What can I do to choose a different quality?
  9. Community can help me by........
  10. I ask for community support by.........

Joy can not survive through the lens of jealousy.

Part VI – A story and personal experience of and with my grandfather.

A story of me and my grandfather living in right relation.

Hand in hand grandfather and I walked side by side down to the flowing river.

Grandfather began his story, he told many in the short years that we spent together.

“Once there was a wonderful rock which lived beside the riverbank of my old fishing hole. When I first met this rock it was a boulder which held all of me, for it was bigger than all of me. I climbed this boulder and I would lay belly down and look at the streams of water as they flowed by. It was here upon this rock looking into the water, that I first saw myself, my face with the sky’s reflection holding the light which crowned my head. I saw my face in the fish which popped up to greet me, and I saw myself in the water which lapped up against the boulder tickling my toes.

This great and massive boulder held me and I knew myself to be one.

When I was about nine years old, I climbed the boulder which now stood about as high as my knee and I wondered about this. I asked the boulder, “why do you sit here day after day, year after year never moving, aren’t you bored?” The boulder replied, “I am not without change, just as you are not without change.” I don’t understand, said the boy as he threw his fishing line into the river.

As grandfather and I sat along the river bed, he gazed into the sky and his voice changed and he began to talk of a boy as if something changed inside of him.

“When the boy turned 17,” he continued, “the men brought him down to the river. They took some strange oil from their pouches and marked his arm and back with a foreign liquid. As the young man sat upon the rock which now held him as a chair, the liquid marked the boy and the rock. The image of the snake marked his body and the rock shared with him what would be his medicine. The young man looked into the water from the rock and the tears of painful gratitude embraced him and he shared his respect for his teachers, his relations through the flowing tears which were now carried by the water. He knew that today marked the day where he became a man.

When he was 21 he came to the river and laid his boy there upon the boulder and he asked his friend rock to be the foundation which held his child. Friend rock said, ‘always’. The boy child grew through the ages and stages and he too was initiated into manhood.

When grandfather was 49, he again found himself at the river’s edge singing songs with all his relations, wind, rock, fire, earth, duck, fish, snake. On this day Eagle came and perched upon the rock. Rock and bird said, “We are One.” “Together as one we gift you with the eyes to help you to see far into the sky and deep into the earth.” The men around gave him gifts which would help him carry his medicine to his people. This medicine was the medicine of wisdom and discernment for the whole.

As the ancestors placed feathered smoke upon his head, light moved within and without. He saw the cosmos of the heavens and the cosmos of the earth and he knew all things to be one. He saw the eternal rock which held him changing, always in gratitude for what the new day brought and he saw the ever changing water moving toward its destination freely. He saw himself changing through lifetimes as stone, wind, ant, corn, baby, boy, man, father, grandfather………and he knew that these inner and outer changes were of one being, one soul, one self and one journey. Each lifetime living in the present moment yet no attachment to a specific form.

He looked to rock and said, ‘you have been my keeper for many years, do you not wish to be something else? Rock replied, ‘through the changes and chances of your life and the life of your children, I have grown and known myself to be more that I am. I carry the markings of your life embedded upon my skin and within each grain of all that I am. And in this life time I have chosen to be rock, to stand still amidst the movement, to watch and support and explore with you, your deepest knowing, for this is your life. It is through your life that I Am grateful.”

With deep appreciation, gratitude and respect, grandfather lay his belly upon the rock and looked into the flowing river of life. He saw his face, old and wrinkled ripples of the flowing water, moving and swimming fish in play, expansive as the sky and free in spirit as the wind.

To this young fiery girl, grandfather said, “Look into the water and see yourself for you are the sacred reflection of all life. How much you know as sacred within is how much you will know the sacred of Life.” I, young fiery girl lay my belly upon the rock and looked deeply within the flowing river of life. And I saw myself to be mother of water which refreshes, cools and clears; as mother earth which holds steady the foundation of dreams of fishes; as wind who blows through the hair, knowing where to hold and where to let fly; as dreamer of vast sky; as rock, the firm foundation of steadfast love. All of these I knew myself to be in the light of sacred life, and I, Willow was born.

And I knew myself to Be, Being who lives between heaven and earth, roots which lay close by the waters edge always remembering that life changes and flows in steadfast steadiness. Willow who shelters and provides rest and shelter for the tired and joyful, one who flows in gratitude and respect with the changes and chances of each day. One who knows that each day is a gift of life, of living, of creations care.

I, young fiery girl held grandfathers weathered hand, embracing the scent of sweat and soil and I knew that the greatest man that ever lived, loved me unconditionally throughout eternity. I looked into grandfathers gentle eyes and floated there. I watched grandfathers chest rise and his shoulders lift and fall back as he smiled.

We two, grandfather and grand-daughter sat together by the rivers edge leaning against rock, watching as the sun set and the mosquitoes buzzed. In this moment, I knew that this great man came to me from heaven and took on the cloak of the elements of Mother Earth, just to sit with me this day to watch the sunset in gratitude for life. And as we prayed in appreciation for the gratitude of the day, the cloud people gathered in rosy pink display. On this day, I knew that he, grandfather, brought me here to share his life as a witness to all beauty in joy and all joy in beauty. Thank you Tha Thi, Master of Life in Living.

Part VII – Native Discernment

To the western mind, the sense of the native often seems confusing and unraveling and without direction; and yet it is simple and of one sense. The sense of being one with all, our quest is ever to explore our very being as creation. Our quest is To Be a human being in the harmonic nature of all life, just as brother wind, sister water, trees, earth, for we are all of these and yet our own individual being in unique expression.

In our 4th world awareness, Our minds, our thoughts and our attitudes create actions which respond to ideas of better or worse, worthy or unworthy.

As we explore 5th world understandings, our self discrimination requires that we observe and witness where we embrace vibrations of gratitude for further exploration of our common relations or where we embrace vibrations of jealousy which keep us in superiority, self righteousness and presumptive entitlement. Our choices begin in our thoughts, the parts of us which are free to tell another that they are wonderful or wrong. Our thoughts choose to support the worthiness of all or unworthiness of self and all.

The native mind moves through the heart of creation.

The native mind moves through the heart of creation, here we learn to explore ourselves as creation and we come to know that we are one breath, one movement, one dream, ONE. That is all – All that IS. There exists no scarcity in separation between the north and the south or the east and the west, for each holds the vibration of the cycles of day and night through the gravity of one love. One is not loved more than the other, in honest truth, we look to each direction for the guidance and clarity of that light.

The native quest is: How do we share (giving and receiving) with each other, this day of gratitude?

I ask that as we begin the new cycle of this year,
Let us call
Upon the rhythm of water to help us flow in unified freedom.
Upon wind to carry our mutual song.
Upon rock to hold us steady and steadfast.
Upon fire to enliven our passion for living.
Upon fish to roam and explore with each other.
Upon sun for constancy and the light of clarity.
And in this unified relation, let us finally give up our personal dependency/co-dependency of self deprecations of unworthiness. For this stance only denies the truth that all life is One.
Let us walk away remembering – WE are One in all that IS.
What part of All that Is do I and do you want to support and sustain?

Part VIII – Self Examination

Please read this carefully and respond in your personal assignment section.

Please one of the options in Part V or come up with an alternative method to address this issue.

This is not an area where I will listen to I didn’t have time, or I didn’t see it, or any other avoidance practice.

I thank each of you for your sincere effort to consider what I am saying.

My love and grace to us as we continue on this pathway of eternal life. Willow

© JiMiTao-ABeautyWay 2024