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One of the questions I am asked most often is, “What is the reason why this or that happened?” Another version of that question is, “What is the cause of this situation in my life?” That question could refer to any thing from a disease to a divorce to a life trauma to the loss of a job. We are compelled to search for reasons. This need is woven into our intellectual and emotional DNA. And it’s also contained within the nature of our soul. We are creatures meant to sojourn through life, to search for who we are and for our place in the scheme of life.

But before we even address the archetypal search for reasons, let’s examine the very structure of the question itself; that is, our assumption that there is but one or two reasons that exist as the fundamental cause(s) of any given problem in life. As an example, the other day I was asked by a woman, “What is the blockage in my fifth chakra?” Several points about this one question reveal how it is we approach our methodology of inquiry, such as locking in the chakras to a very specific parameter of cause and effect. The chakras are energetic centers, not physical organs. As such, their scope of influences are not bound by the same clear and specific features as the organs of the body. Rather, the energetic fields of the chakras blend into each other, while noting a characteristic of “theme” unique to each center. But the chakras are an integrated system of subtle and constant communication and distribution of one’s power – or lack of it.

Searching for “the” blockage, like searching for “the” reason for why you developed an illness or had an accident or are living through a season of crises, comes from a template of thinking that suggests there is one basic reason for every one thing that happens in your life and in life in general. Thus, when analysts look at the market collapse in a day or regain some balance, they offer one or two reasons as an explanation. Perhaps there has been some movement in the oil market or maybe a huge merger has taken place between two corporate giants – that explains everything. To those who accept the “one reason per problem/event” way of thinking, then such explanations suffice.

But for those who are able to see with a bit more of a cosmic backdrop, such explanations become preposterous. Let us start again by recognizing that there is no such thing as one cause that generates any one event. Consider again the question, “What is the blockage in my fifth chakra?” That is the power center of choice, and thus, of a person’s will power. But that hardly sums up what this chakra represents. A person’s life is built upon an endless series of choices, from the most intimate and silent ones that you keep within yourself to the ones you think make no difference at all to the ones made carelessly to the ones you regret to the ones that have effected and continue to effect the lives of others to the ones made from fear to the ones you should have made. So now, ask yourself, “What is the source of my blockage?”

Where does a person begin such a search? And how do you even know you’ve come upon the right answer or answers?

Now let me introduce the subject of, “Converging Cycles of Change”.

As the now familiar teaching of Buddha says, “Change is constant.” Every choice we make sets a cycle of change into motion. Buddha also introduced the mystical teaching/truth that, “All is illusion.” That is a truth that is often difficult to grasp in its depth and power, but consider in the context of choice that we usually make the assumption that once we make a choice or a decision, that’s that. We move on, so to speak. That’s where the Buddha-illusion comes in. Within the physical world, it appears that we move on, but the great cosmic Truth is that each choice we make sets a cycle of change in motion, like an invisible wheel that sets into motion a series of causes and effects based upon the quality of intent you “breathed” into that choice. Let me say this in another way.

Everyone has said one thing to a person, but felt or thought differently simultaneously. Perhaps someone asked you if something was the matter with you and you said “no” when you should have said, “yes”. In that moment, you are two people in one body. One of you is lying and one of you is speaking the truth, even if the truth is silent anger or rage or hurt feelings. You are, in that moment, incongruent. Who you are, as you stand in front of that other person, is, in effect, an “illusion”, as Buddha would say. You are not who the person is assuming you are because the whole of you is really not present as a whole and congruent person. Even as you are verbally saying one thing, you are emotionally reacting differently. Both of you, so to speak, are setting two different cycles of cause and effect into motion – neither of which is fully truthful or fully congruent with your congruent, whole self. How many times a day, a week, a month, do people – do you – find yourself in exactly this type of situation?

All of these fractured choices that we make in our life set cycles of cause and effect in motion and these cycles, in turn, affect the events of our daily life as well as the larger scope of our life. And every so often, a cluster of cycles converge, as if they have a built-in time line in which the effect set in motion by the cause (our choice), finally has its moment of impact in our life. Our life is filled with impact experiences. In fact, we count on the impact force of our “conscious” choices: the choice to buy a house, the choice to go to work, the choice to function in a healthy way in our everyday life. It’s the impact of our unconscious choices that generates everything from the spontaneous eruptions of chaos to spontaneous opportunities and what we call “good fortune.”

Given that perspective, it would be far more accurate for us to ask, “What cycles in my life are now converging? When did I set them into motion? What impact are they having and how shall I respond to these changes?”

Shifting to the global theater of events, the same perspective applies only on a far more complex scale. There is no such thing as one cause for any one event. Events unfolding on the earth, whether economic, political, or even environmental, are the result of numerous cycles of cause and effect. It would be an illusion on the grandest scale to analyze any of today’s problems, given only today’s challenges.

The key is to learn to discern the impact of cycles in human events as well as in your own life. How vast and far reaching are these cycles of life? The influence most definitely includes the planets and their particular fields of magnetic power. And, of course, the realm of archetypes and mythologies is, so far as I am concerned, among the most potent domains of influence within the human experience. Cycles of change within the field of archetypes and mythologies reshape the destiny of humanity – and though words can hardly communicate the profound significance of what I’m about to say – we are living through a shift in the mythological forces right now. We are actually experiencing the impact of the ending of cycles of mythologies and the initiatory stages of new myths.

This is an extraordinary time to be alive – and all the more so for those who share a curiosity about how the cycles of the cosmos blend their magnetic forces to influences the cycles of our personal lives. The connection between these two realms is what many of the mystics and the enlightened spiritual masters articulated in their teachings of the mystical laws. The key to identifying converging cycles in your own life is often found through understanding the mystical laws governing the cosmos. These are our connecting links. For example, the way of the Tao, the way of balance, applied to your life becomes a tracking device. Where is your life off balance? How do you track the choices you made that initiated imbalance? At some point, these “imbalanced choices” are destined to converge and create an experience of imbalance so that you can “right” your life.

The same application of the Tao is at work within the grand scheme of the planet, of nature, of the whole. As another mystical law teaches us, “What is in One is in the Whole”. What is true for you, is true for all life.

Many mysteries of your life are given new meaning and understanding when seen through the lens of cosmic and personal cycles, planetary influences, and the mystical laws. Because such teachings are so rich and meaningful, I created a CMED workshop with Lynn Bell, a renowned astrologer and author, in which we are teaching on exactly this subject. I think that this is vital knowledge – the type that falls under the category of the ancient Mystery Schools. I hope many of you will consider studying with us for the sake of personal enrichment.

Love,
Caroline

Navigating Cosmic Change in Your Everyday Life
Oak Brook, IL
June 10-13, 2010

Everyone knows our familiar world is undergoing extraordinary changes. Whether we look at our local communities or on a global scale, we cannot help but be awestruck by the enormity of the breakdowns taking place within the world.

Watch or listen to Caroline speak live at her workshops, plus many other audio titles. Available as downloads to your PC or as CDs/DVDs.

Hours of video and audio highlights from CMED workshops and events. All content is high quality production.

Personal Nutrition Provider and Checklist of Health Issues and Illness are online interactive tests that allow you to quickly build a personal profile and get on the road to better health.

An on-going resource for personal growth, the purpose in creating this on-line program is to share with you thoughts, ideas, feedback from you to others, inspiration, and direction to help enrich your life.

The Calendar of Archetypal Influences, written by popular CMED Teacher/ faculty: Richard Tarnas, author of the acclaimed Cosmos and Psyche, offers a beautifully designed personal calendar to facilitate even greater insight into your archetypal cycles.

The Cosmic Window, written and designed by Philip Levine, and the Calendar of Archetypal Influences, co-created by Richard Tarnas and Philip Levine, are each made for you personally, based on your own time and place of birth.

The Lunar Life Cycle is prepared just for you, based upon your own time and place of birth, and offers you perspective, a way of seeing, as if you were able to ascend to a mountain top and to view your surroundings and see where everything is. Using the lunar cycle from New Moon to Full Moon and then back to New Moon, can help you to understand the ebbs and flows in the unfolding of your life (and many other cycles as well). It allows you to know when it is the time to push, to act, or decide; or when it is time to let yourself empty, to be still.

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