The devil made me do it is a time-tested excuse for screwing up your life. But the vast majority of people don’t need the devil to screw up their lives; they’re perfectly capable of doing it themselves. In this edition of Inner Awareness Newsletter, I’m going to point out four ways that people, without any outside help from the devil, can make a mess of their lives and relationships.
Make Bad Decisions: This is by far the most popular way that people screw up their lives and relationships. People pick the wrong life partner, have children at the wrong time or for the wrong reasons, move to the wrong location, choose the wrong job or career, choose the wrong life path or spiritual teacher. I think I’ve made my point. Bad decisions are inevitable if you ignore your intuition and discernment, remain ignorant of your dharma and/or follow your heart without consulting your head.
Let’s start with intuition and discernment. Intuition is your innate ability to understand something instinctively, without the need for conscious reasoning. Discernment is your ability to discern the difference between authentic fields of consciousness, energy and subtle matter (these fields don’t change) and those that are not authentic (these fields do change). If you ignore your intuition and don’t develop discernment, you won’t be able to access the inner guidance that emerges directly from the Akasha.
Dharma is next. Your dharma is your raison d'être or purpose. The term is derived from the Sanskrit root dhri, meaning to “uphold” or to “sustain.” Both yoga and tantra teach that all human beings share a collective dharma, which is to achieve Self-realization. Every human being also has a personal dharma that is their unique path of healing and personal liberation. It’s by following your dharma that you learn who you are and what you are capable of achieving in this life. If you don’t follow your dharma by consistently doing what is appropriate, the universe won’t support your decisions and you won’t experience the satisfaction that is a sign of a life well lived.
Following your (human) heart while ignoring your head and its input is a recipe for disaster. That’s because the human heart isn’t part of your subtle energy system; this means that it doesn’t generate its own energy like the heart chakra does. It can only reflect energy which means that it can be manipulated by external projections, self-limiting core values and by non-physical beings that oppose your dharma.
The truth is you have three hearts, which is why the region between your solar plexus and throat, including your chest, upper back, and shoulders, is central to your well-being.
You may be wondering how you or anyone else could have three hearts. However, as an inter-dimensional being, it’s not as strange as it sounds. On the left side of your chest is your first heart – the human heart. If you move horizontally three inches (8 cm) to the right, you reach your sternum. Directly in the middle of your sternum, on the level of soul, is your second heart – your heart chakra. Moving horizontally to the right another three inches (8 cm), you reach your third heart – Atman.
If the conditions are favorable, staying centered in your human heart can bring benefits, but only if your heart hasn’t been overburdened by attachments, karmic baggage and a toxic subtle environment. But most people don’t enjoy those conditions because of the distorted consciousness, energy and subtle matter that has proliferated during in the Kali Yuga.
Staying centered in your second heart, your heart chakra, will bring you sustained benefits and help you make good decisions. That’s because the heart chakra supports personal rights, which will make it difficult for people to coerce you into engaging in inappropriate activities. However, it’s only when you make the transition to the third heart, Atman, that your decisions will reflect the will of Universal Consciousness, the source of everything that exists in the multiverse.
Hold on to Your Ex-Lovers: Human interactions take place in both the physical-material world and the non-physical world of consciousness, energy and subtle matter. In fact, it’s primarily through the non-physical fields that people share authentic and inauthentic feelings, emotions and awareness. When an interaction between two people has been authentic, there will be no residue connecting them together once they’ve separated, except for the unsullied consciousness, energy and subtle matter that manifested as pleasure, love, intimacy and joy. In contrast, when an interaction has been inauthentic, there will be a residue of distorted subtle fields that create self-limiting attachments.
Indeed, partners who’ve interacted by projecting distorted fields may remain attached to one another even after they’ve physically separated or ended their relationship – unless their association has been ended properly and projections in the form of attachment fields, cords and controlling waves have been severed.
The fact is that many people unknowingly remain trapped by subtle attachments with ex-lovers and friends, even after they have physically separated or drifted apart. It’s therefore essential that all fields of attachment are severed when the relationship on the physical-material level has ended. Changing the nature of the relationship by making an ex-lover a friend, business partner, acquaintance, etc. does not sever the old attachments on the subtle levels of consciousness, energy and subtle matter. To do that, the permission to access your field must be revoked. The simplest way to do that and make room for an authentic relationship is to make it clear to your ex that the relationship is permanently over.
Depend on Other People for Your Happiness: There is no better way to screw up an otherwise good relationship than by making a loved one responsible for your happiness and well-being. By doing that, you’re making yourself dependent, and dependent people have a distorted view of love and intimacy. Instead of nourishing their relationships with prana, chi, jing and pure consciousness, dependent people weaken their relationships by projecting fields of distorted consciousness, energy and subtle matter at their relationship partners. They do that in order to hold on to the people they consider essential for their happiness, even if it comes at the expense of their freedom and well-being.
Although dependent people may justify their actions, the foundation of their problem rests with their kidneys, which are reservoirs of jing, the essence of yin (feminine energy) and yang (masculine energy) on the level of spirit.
If your kidney jing has been blocked, you will feel enervated and isolated. Your natural feelings and sensations will also be blocked making it almost impossible for you to share pleasure, love and joy with your loved ones.
When you lack kidney jing, pervasive fear and/or anxiety can also interfere with your relationships. Your ability to resist negative influences will also be weakened, which can make you passive, weak and more susceptible to energetic and physical trauma. It’s not surprising, therefore, that people who lack kidney jing can begin to depend on another person for their happiness.
There are two types of jing that influence kidney jing. Ancestral jing comes from one’s parents and determines basic constitution; it cannot be altered, but it can be positively influenced by acquired jing. The sources of acquired jing include the eternal field of jing and foods such as seeds, nuts (particularly walnuts), beans and peas, mussels, oatmeal, dried fruit, hot soups and cooked root vegetables.
Life-affirming relationships and environments are also important sources of acquired jing. It’s the interaction of ancestral jing and acquired jing that produces kidney jing.
Pick Someone with a Discordant Soul Vibration: While it’s true that all human beings have a soul that includes intellect, rational and intuitive mind as well as authentic emotions and feelings, it doesn’t mean that all people have the same soul vibration.
Soul vibration is determined by many factors including where a person’s soul originated (not all souls originated on Earth), how many lives the soul has experienced, where the soul has lived during this life and its previous incarnations – as well as a person’s activities and experiences in past incarnations, especially those that were violent and left energetic wounds and trauma scars in their subtle field.
The combination of factors mentioned above explains why not all souls in their current condition are naturally compatible with one another or capable of experiencing all the pleasure, love, intimacy and joy available to them. It also explains why elders, in many traditional societies, took the soul vibration of prospective partners seriously enough to consult astrologers and professional match makers before a match was made.
Compatible Soul Vibrations
When partners have compatible soul vibrations, they will feel comfortable with one another, understand one another, and they will have a strong foundation for intimacy. This will make it easy for them to shift their orientation from Me to We. And it will make it easier for them to share pleasure, love, intimacy and joy with one another. Partners with the same soul vibration will naturally respect each other, and they will enhance each other’s best qualities. They will be able to share more activities than family members whose soul vibrations aren’t naturally compatible – and they will find it easy to compromise and reconcile their differences.
Incompatible Soul Vibrations
Partners with incompatible soul vibrations will not feel like they have arrived, although they will often experience a yearning to unite as well as intense feelings of romantic love at the onset of their relationship. However, in most cases these intense feelings – particularly the intense yearning to unite – indicates a deeper problem, which is often overlooked. That is the need to overcome subtle energetic barriers to love and intimacy. These subtle barriers emerge when partners are attracted to one another, but their soul vibrations are incompatible.
Attraction can be created in many ways. It can be created by compatibility. But it can also be created by past-life, karmic attachments, by cultural programming and by attachments to distorted fields of consciousness, energy and subtle matter that are shared by both partners. However, attraction without compatibility can create striving, which can block the flow of prana, chi and jing through a person’s subtle field. That in turn can enhance feelings of loneliness, which would seem out of place in a healthy relationship.