THE CELESTINE PROPHECY �?nbsp; INSIGHTS INTO THE MEANING OF LIFE

 

The Second Insight:

THE LONGER NOW

Our new spiritual awakening represents the creation of a more complete worldview, which replaces a five-hundred year-old preoccupation with secular survival and comfort. While this preoccupation with technological advancement was an important step, our awakening to life's coincidences is opening us up to the real purpose of human life on this planet and the real nature of our universe.

The Second Insight occurs when we grasp the historical importance of our awakening. We now see that we have existed in a secular slumber for centuries and that the awareness of "Celestine moments" in our lives represents an awakening from what has been a preoccupation with material security and comfort.

The European Renaissance began when we lost faith in the ability of medieval churchmen to describe our spiritual reality. We created a mandate for science to investigate the world around us and to discover our spiritual nature. Until recently, scientists focused solely on discovering the forces thought to be governing our world.

But the loss of certainty brought on by the fall of the churchmen created a deep existential insecurity. What was the real purpose of human life? We eased our insecurity by preoccupying ourselves with another goal: physical progress. We decided to settle into this Earth of ours, improving our conditions in the physical world-at least until we learned our true spiritual situation.

During the Industrial Revolution, we saw major technological gains, reaffirming the mind-set of "progress." Our need for spiritual knowledge was almost lost. Preoccupying ourselves with secular concerns, we accepted the illusion that we lived in a rational and predictable universe, where chance occurrences had no meaning.

In the last decades of our century, led by science itself, this worldview, devoid of spiritual mystery, began to disintegrate. We grasp the Second Insight when we understand the historical momentum leading us to a new, more mysterious, more spiritual life view.

The Fourth Insight:

THE STRUGGLE FOR POWER

So often humans cut themselves off from the greater source of our energy systems and so feel weak and insecure. To gain energy, we tend to manipulate or force others to give us attention and thus energy. When we successfully dominate others in this way, we feel more powerful, but they are left weakened and often fight back. Competition for scarce human energy is the cause of all conflict between people.

The great contribution of psychologists in our time - Carl Jung, Otto Rank, Norman 0. Brown, and Eric Berne - has been to show that humans tend to be motivated by deep insecurity. We feel alone and search for the security derived ftorn being validated by others. We want to feel that others approve of and even defer to our knowledge and position. We try to subtly force this validation by controlling the thoughts and opinions of those around us.

Looked at experientially, we recognize the feeling. Alone, we often feel anxious, our thoughts cloudy, sensing uncertainty about our worth or status. But when we're with someone who is paying attention, listening to what we have to say with deference, we feel empowered, buoyant. Thoughts seem to flow easily and we reach a sense of clarity about who we are. This is the feeling that entices and motivates us. From early childhood, we learn ways to interact, beguiling and forcing others to defer to our opinions.

All of us have also experienced another person seeking to understand our sense of who we are or what we know, in order to confuse us into deferring to that person. When we try to resist this sense of being invalidated or undermined, disagreements, often difficult to resolve, arise.

This negative interaction is common in human affairs, but we are beginning to understand this interaction in terms of energy dynamics. When we force someone else to defer to us, we actually suck energy from the energy field of the other person in order to produce an energy boost in ourselves. But we now know that we need not resort to stealing additional energy from others. We have at our disposal another source, a divine source of spiritual energy, for our ultimate security

 

THE CELESTINE PROPHECY �?nbsp; INSIGHTS INTO THE MEANING OF LIFE

 

 

The Sixth insight:

CLEARING THE PAST

 

The more we stay connected, the more we are actually aware of those times when we lose connection, usually when we are under stress. In these times, we can see our own particular way of stealing energy from others. Once our manipulations are brought to personal awareness, our connection becomes more constant and we can discover our own growth path in life and our spiritual mission-the personal way we can contribute to the world.

Once we find our own experience of an inner source of divine energy, we become acutely aware of those times when we lose this connection. Usually, we realize that this loss of connection occurs during times of stress when we feel particularly anxious and think we have to seize control of the interactions of our lives.

It is at these times and under these circumstances that we can detect the particular style in which we attempt to control others, one or more of what I have described as "control dramas." These styles of controlling fall along a spectrum from passive to aggressive. For instance, if we seek to control another by making that person feel guilty for not doing enough for us (gaining energy when he or she buys into this "guilt trip" and begins to attend to us), we can be described as a "poor-me."

 

If, on the other hand, we seek to control others in a slightly less passive way by remaining detached, secretive, and vague - hoping to entice someone into chasing us around in order to probe and figure us out, and thus gaining energy from that person's attention in that manner-then we are acting "aloof."

More aggressive behavior would be the attempt to control others by "finding fault" and making others feel self-conscious and monitored, a style designated as that of the "interrogator." Lastly, we come to the most aggressive control drama of all, "intimidator," who wins energy by frightening others into paying attention.

If we are to avoid falling into these control dramas, each of us must first identify our particular "drama," or in the case of multiple use, dramas, and become fully conscious of these manipulations every time we employ them. Why? Because any unconscious habit brought fully into awareness is released, and we can begin to lengthen those periods when we are in a state of connection, trust, and love-opening us up to our real purpose in life, our spiritual mission.

Once we bring our control drama into awareness and stay connected with our inner source of energy, we are free to look at ourselves and our lives in a more truthful way. First we can see how the dynamics in our early family reinforced our control drama and animated the power struggles with family members. Then we can move beyond these struggles to see the spiritual purpose behind our early family experience.

We must step back and ask: Why was I there? What life issues was I meant to be sensitized to? To explore this question, we must look at both our parents in terms of their lifestyles. What we might ask is: What did my father stand for? What were his strengths and accomplishments? What did he want from life that he never attained?

Similarly, we must look at our mother's life and ask the very same questions about her. What was her life about? What was she trying to establish in the world, regardless of how successfully?

Out of this analysis we can see a momentum into which we were born, two points of view that we wanted to integrate into our early lives. Looked at spiritually, we can see two approaches to life that were to some extent different, perhaps even contrary. Yet we were placed there precisely to resolve and synthesize their truths into a higher form.

This is the spiritual process through which one generation evolves the reality it inherits into another, more truthful form. Our whole lives are about finding the combined truth of our early family and then continually evolving this truth into higher and higher form until the telling of it becomes our mission. Once we understand this truth, we can see that all the experiences, the synchronicity, of our lives were a preparation for this mission. It becomes our way of uplifting the world.

THE CELESTINE PROPHECY �?nbsp; INSIGHTS INTO THE MEANING OF LIFE

 

 

The Seventh insight:

ENGAGING THE FLOW

 

Knowing our personal mission further enhances the flow of mysterious coincidences as we are guided toward our destinies. First we have a question; then dreams, daydreams, and intuitions lead us toward the answers, which usually are synchronistically provided by the wisdom of another human being.

Once we discover the "truth" we tell - our message about what is important in living life-the mysterious coincidence, the synchronicity, really increases in our lives. For some of us, the discovery of our mission will perhaps lead us to change our jobs.

Others will find that we are in exactly the right place to tell our truth. Still others might stay in an incompatible job but pursue their mission as an avocation. But on whatever stage we find ourselves, we will see that the synchronicity in our lives pertains to the pursuit of the mission.

We begin to see more clearly how the mysterious coincidences happen. It begins with an intuition, a hunch, a mental image of saying something to someone, of going somewhere initiating a project. Sometimes we don't quite see the full picture. But when we act on the hunch, when other events begin to take place that feel destined, we begin to see why we were intuitively guided to make the move. Each event brings other intuitions, and we are shown where to go to tell our truth, which groups need our message, and what form of communication to use.

Dreams are especially valuable when determining our path. Dreams always contain the characteristics of stories: plot, characters, action. No matter how strange the dream, we can analyze the plot. What are the characters saying? What emotions are being expressed? What are they seeking? From whom are they fleeing? Take the plot of the dream and superimpose it on the plot of your life. What are the similarities? Is there similar action happening in your life of which you may have been unaware? Is the action in the dream something you may want to try? Or is the dream telling you to avoid this action at all cost?

We must be ever alert for messages