KAJAMA.COM NEWSLETTER

May 27 through June 2, 2024

A much calmer week awaits after all the astrological activity of last week, with no major shifts on the calendar. Do note that Jupiter's move into Gemini will have a way of opening our minds over the next twelve months, as well as bringing new and intriguing people into our midst! The first three days of the week provide innovative and exciting energy under the Aquarius Moon, where we'll be inspired to think outside the box and find new ways to meet our dreams. A Pisces Moon on Thursday and Friday will call for us to go inward and balance out our spiritual lives. If we've let any of our soulful disciplines like meditation slip, this is the perfect time to renew our commitments to maintaining consistent contact with Spirit. The weekend is busy under the Aries Moon, as we attempt to catch up on things after a week of mental activity and spiritual contemplation. Anything you need to accomplish this week is best done on Saturday and Sunday!

How the Mind of the Soul Establishes Wellbeing, by Neale Lundgren, PhD

(Article originally published in The Llewellyn Journal.)

The soul is always open to reveal itself to the sincere seeker. And because the soul is naturally positive and unpretentious, it projects a receiving spirit to all. As such, the soul can help us maintain not only a physical, mental, and emotional sense of wellbeing, but when operating at a high level, can also be a powerful force for the world.

This is because the soul is who you really are. The soul is a finder and revealer of universal truth and mirrors the highest principles of human existence. A universal truth is knowledge that transcends doctrine. A Hindu can find benefit in a Hebrew proverb and a Christian can be inspired by a Sufi poem when viewed from the unifying perspective of the soul.

Only the soul understands how to love the self as the other, and the other as the self. Whether one is an atheist or a theist, in the right circumstances, silence is golden when compassionate action is implemented.

The moment we embrace a path guided by the light of a universal truth, life then becomes more than a mere system of thought. Life becomes a way of soul seeking, a way of soul finding, and a way of soulful living with soulful others in the material world.

Although immaterial, the soul gravitates to all things of true substance. Anything that has integrity and coherence, an inherent wholeness about it, the soul's intelligence recognizes as a reflection of its own nature. This intelligence is the mind of the soul, located at the deepest center within every human being and within the being of all living things.

When we discover our soul mind, we awaken to a level of consciousness beyond ordinary awareness. The soul mind sees all things as part of an interrelated web of a greater wholeness. The soul mind has this capacity because it is an open systems intelligence. The material, or "closed systems," mind, on the other hand, is made up of inherited beliefs, opinions, or any limiting model of reality that we take for actual reality.

There is a relationship between close-mindedness and mental dullness. A material mind is shut off from the light and spaciousness the soul mind by its nature produces. Enclosed within its own boundaries, the material mind tends to be narrow, rigid, and oppositional.

Accessing the soul's intelligence can both refresh and strengthen the material mind and yet expand its horizons. An open mind tends to be porous, flexible, and strong, as long as it stays rooted in the fertile soil of the soul. A closed mind is like a hard stone at the bottom of a dried-up stream. An open mind is like a flourishing tree near the bank of a flowing river.

Mysticism, a frequently misunderstood term, is really nothing more than an open systems approach to spirituality based not upon a belief or a concept, but upon actual experience. Mysticism is the treasure house of spiritual technologies, providing the seeker with maps for the journey of consciousness as well as means to reach higher states of awareness and love. Spiritual experience at its best, both expands and stabilizes the material mind by rooting consciousness in the mind of the soul.

The soul's intelligence encourages thought, including every one of the physical senses, to stretch beyond the consensual grids of ordinary cognition and perception, but not as a way to abandon the world and daily responsibilities. The soul mind connects the material mind more intimately and meaningfully with others, with the earth, and ultimately, with the entire universe.

This high-grade connective capacity of the soul enables consciousness to enlighten the material mind because the soul's intelligence at its core is a substance of light, a luminous being of affectionate awareness. Although the soul's intelligence is by nature empathic, its structure is its own strength. Inner poise and mental sharpness are essential characteristics of the soul mind and formulate its energy "backbone." While the material mind tends to be anxious and neurotic and easily drained of energy, the soul mind is able to connect and resonate empathically with other minds in its vicinity and abroad, yet without being easily exhausted.

Because the soul's intelligence is intimately connected to the heart of being, it resonates more immediately with love than with any other emotion and has continual access to its wellspring. When we strive to connect with others from a higher frequency of non-judgment, for example, we sense others with more clarity and understanding. Understanding is empathy with boundaries and instrumental in the maintenance of the soul's hygiene in the material world.

A healthy state of mind is re-energized and refueled not only through sleep but also through the practice of meditation. Unlike sleep, meditation has been clinically found to produce a coherent brain state of relaxed alertness. Relaxed alertness gives the mind entry to presence.

Presence, by its very nature, is a positive energy state of being. When the mind is in presence, it looks neither forward nor backward. Only the regretful past and worrisome future is able to create negative stress upon the mind.

Being in presence helps to shift awareness into a new key. As the material mind learns to open up to the expansive and fecund field of the soul mind, the result is that something gets quickened in us beyond our physical senses. We awaken to the grander senses of the soul.

How do we know when we have experienced the soul's senses? Every time we are touched by awe, enthusiasm, attunement, and resonance, for example, we experience life with the senses of the soul.

In my book, Meditations for the Soul, I provide meditations and awakening exercises to activate and strengthen these deeper senses that can help us access and maintain presence. This is why every moment is potentially a soulful sense experience. Only when our mind is fully and freely present to being, are we then more alive.

Think of these moments: a sunrise or sunset, a gaze into the eyes of a beloved, a moonlight-drenched earth awash in softened hues, the birth of a child, the peace-filled dying of a seasoned soul. Even a seemingly ordinary moment can trigger a soul-sense experience: the smell of rain, the dance of light's shadow through a gauzy curtain, a moment of thoughtful silence. These and so many other tastes and glimpses of soulful reality, that seem to suspend the self in time, would seep into our very pores if we would but allow them entry.

Our soul mind also makes its journeys into "darkness" when the tides of the ocean of light momentarily recede. All of us from time to time have been drawn into those dark nights of longing and sorrow. These slower movements of the soul have their own rhythm. Their cadence resonates with the moon's waxing and waning phases and with the daily rising and setting of the sun.

In our soul's dance with love in any one of its forms, love can seem to move toward and away from us, bringing us happiness one moment and sadness the next. The soul mind has the ability to contain both extremes and all that lies between in a spacious wholeness of acceptance.

This continuous cycle of darkness and light, empty and full seen now in the larger context of wholeness, reveals the rhythmic patterns occurring within our soul mind throughout the inner seasons of our lives. Knowledge and acceptance of these cycles has a great capacity to stabilize the material mind as it calibrates to the frequency of its true center. The soul mind is the true center of the self, as instanced in the wise saying, "And this too shall pass."

Everyone has the potential of companionship with one's own soul and the soul of others. In essence, the soul is the inner physician that heals all ills and bridges all distances. For it is indeed the soul and its perpetual breath of life that makes each of us whole, moment by moment, day by day, and life by life.

Article originally published in The Llewellyn Journal. Copyright Llewellyn Worldwide, 2021. All rights reserved.

Some time ago I met a man I felt a really strong connection to, and it got me thinking about past lives. Suddenly, I feel a very strong need to learn about my past lives and how they may be affecting my current experiences. I bought a book on regression and I asked a friend to help me with the process. She told me she wasn't comfortable with the idea, because she said that exploring past lives can be dangerous if traumatic experiences are recalled. She urged me not to do it, or at least to find someone with lots of experience to guide me through it. I feel like she's making a big deal out of nothing. Do you think it can be dangerous? Also, do you have any advice on how to go about exploring our past lives? Thank you!

Lillian

Dreamchaser:

Some people believe that exploring past lives can be dangerous, and some people think it is perfectly safe. Your friend is obviously one of the ones who feels it is risky.

I personally feel that if it is done properly, and not as a parlor trick or a form of entertainment, it can be very helpful.

Your friend is right in one aspect: Sometimes we find out very traumatic or frightening information while exploring previous lives. We were not always happy, well-behaved, or even goodhearted people. We have all had some really horrible lives.

For example, in one life I was a priestess who threw newborn babies into a volcano as a form of sacrifice. I really felt justified in doing this in that life, but in this life, I find it appalling. You cannot, under any circumstances, expect all your lives to be full of joy, goodness and happiness.

This man is a catalyst for you to go and find out what you need to know about your past lives. In my own past life journeys, I've found that there are common themes in each lifetime I have lived, including this one.

The one theme that comes to mind now is that in every lifetime, I lived and died alone. As my regular clients may remember, I am also single in this life and live alone, except for my teenagers, which we all know is LIKE living alone. You will find that a lot of issues, problems, traits, etc., that you have in this life were present in prior lives as well.

The way that I personally explore past lives is to picture myself walking around in this big field full of wildflowers. I make sure that I am totally present in that field, and then I find the bridge of time.

It is just a wooden bridge. I always make sure to take the same number of steps over as I take back. I have heard that you can warp time if you do not count and use the same number of steps. I don't know if that is true, but I'd rather not find out the hard way.

When I get over the bridge, I look down at my feet and see what gender and color I am. I then look around at where I am and who and what is around me. Then I start to walk around and ask questions about who I am and where I am.

In this way, I slowly start to uncover the past lives I've lived. The hardest part of the whole process is convincing your mind that it is real and that you are NOT making it up.

If possible, I also view my death in that life so that I can see how it ended and why, for oftentimes, that will prove important in understanding the baggage I carry from that lifetime.

I wish you safe and enlightening journeys into the past.

*****

Astrea:

Unless you're in the hands of a qualified psychotherapist who is also trained and experienced with hypnotic regression, then yes, trying to discover your past lives through regression can be very dangerous and emotionally traumatic.

This is one situation where you don't want to place yourself in the hands of a beginner or someone who is an amateur or "new" at what they're doing. Your friend was smart to refuse your request. She didn't want to be responsible for what might happen to you if you received traumatic information.

Past life "memories" tend to be highly emotionally charged and personal, and even the happy ones can be upsetting. Discovering the "where and when" of yourself in other times is an intense experience, and it may not be a pleasant thing for some people.

Buying a book on regression probably won't enable you to access those lives either. Most people gradually uncover this information over a period of many years, because otherwise, the human mind can't process it.

Even the most open and accepting person is probably going to be thrown for a loop by seeing her own death. Also, no matter how well adjusted you are, there are some things that you probably don't WANT to know. For those things, you need someone with you who can guide you through this complex inner maze.

There are some psychiatrists (more than you might think) who will attempt something like this with you after a period of counseling. Most of the time you will have to work with a therapist for six months to two years before they will attempt any kind of regression with you, and this is different from regression for buried memories - that's a different kind of work altogether.

If you want to know about your past lives without undergoing extensive therapy first, find someone who can either channel that information for you or read it from your birthday, cards, or whatever tool they use. When I do those reports for people, all I need is their birth date, time and place (that is CRUCIAL!) and my cards.

I can't explain how it comes to me, but it does. Many readers can do this for you. Shop around until you find one with whom you feel you have a good rapport.

Some readers can get you started finding out things on your own through different kinds of study, and some will be able to tell you things simply by talking to you. This is safer, less expensive and a good bit more FUN. I also think these past life readings are just as valuable as digging through your own subconscious for past life memories.

Regression isn't the only way!

Astrea:

Many times in life we hear, "You will always have what you NEED, but not necessarily what you WANT." Your spirit must have needed to experience the feeling of leaving your human body, and the suggestion in the next chapter of Sylvia Brown's book was all it took to get you there.

Even though you hadn't read it yet, your SOUL recognized the title of that chapter as something it had been seeking, and your soul, knowing that you had that reference to read after your experience, got with it and out you went!

While I don't usually recommend her books, Sylvia Brown has a wide reaching and powerful effect on lots of people. A Gemini like you would be able to relate easily to her writing and put it to good use. Synchronicity - you gotta love it!

I like your description of "getting caught." That's exactly what it feels like, isn't it? One minute you're free and hovering above the room, and the next minute, ZAP! back down into your corporeal form you go!

As a little kid, I loved that "feeling of return." With practice, most of the time we can control that event, but sometimes, when our physical ears hear a distracting noise or something else occurs to knock us back into reality, back we go. With practice you will be able to control your return better.

I find it interesting that you were visiting your mother-in-law and not someone in your own genetic family. Evidently, you and your husband got married for reasons that are even deeper than love. His family's interest in "psychic stuff" will nurture your children in such matters and help them to grow into their own abilities.

You'll never have to be concerned that when your daughter visits them, she'll be discouraged from exploring her own psychic life and power. My parents encouraged me to develop my psychic senses in a time when it wasn't nice to even discuss such things in public. Heck, it's STILL not considered a great topic at the dinner table in some families!

Your kids will get to talk about it ALL and ask questions and read and study. This is going to give them such an edge in life! Talk with your husband about how you want to present this to your kiddos, so that you are united in your approach and ready to tell them their experiences are all natural and okay.

A word or two of warning: Geminis often have difficulty staying grounded in REAL LIFE. Don't get so strung out on your ASTRAL life that you neglect what you're doing here on Earth.

You are at the beginning of a long journey to learn where your power really lies. Try to be patient with this process and take your time.