The 7 Stages of Life
A Sacred Journey

Birth

Awareness of Self. It is the first stirring of awakening outside our ‘ego’, that prompts us to reach out for that life long spiritual quest for Truth. It is the first intuitive Knowing that we are indeed part of a Greater Whole. It is the first step in remembering who we ARE.

Within the moment of Birth, is the certainty that our egos are only a small integral part of who we are and that there has always been an anchor of Love within our Hearts, called Self, that has always been an eternal guiding essence.

It corresponds to the 6^th Ray, or God attribute. Expansion of service, sustaining power and spiritual nourishment come under this ray, the radiating of spiritual vitality to all life as well as to mankind. It represents Grace, Devotion and Ministration. It is the ray of tranquility, healing, mercy, forgiveness and, the ministration of Christ. It is the desire to be of service through the Mastery of the Christ Consciousness.

Its color is Ruby, for it symbolizes the Blood of Christ that carries the very source of Life by way of the Sacred Breath directly from God, Divine Source. Merging with the Sacred Breath of Life is the key to the first step of enlightenment of Self.

When we come upon this awareness of Self, a shift in consciousness occurs and, we find a lot of our desires and needs shifting to becoming secondary to our quest for the Light. This change in attitude, in consciousness, builds momentum for the Sacred Breath, the Blood of Christ, to flow freely without hindrance throughout all our dimensional levels of Self.

So is this our Birth to becoming aware of our own Divinity, for this is the first of these divine gifts we can open our Hearts to receive.

The first gift we give to ourselves on our Birthday.

I Am

The Son also Rises.

‘What a mess’, I thought, as I looked at my chart. Conflict and opposition all over the place. I could understand why I felt at war with myself. Heart in conflict with head. Actions in conflict with desires. What was I? A crash test dummy of inner conflict?

I saw the Light alright.

The ‘me’ I displayed on the outside, the ‘me’ the World knew, really didn’t accurately express the genuine ‘me’, that was on the inside. Intimacy was a big issue. I wouldn’t let people get close enough to really get a good look into me.

I was a con artist. I would compromise myself all the time. Saying things to be nice or polite, that I really didn’t mean. Answering questions based on what I knew the other person wanted to hear. Answering questions based on what answer would get me liked or get me whatever it was I was seeking to get out of the person: sympathy, support, agreement, funding, etc. My list could go on and on.

I guess my problem was that I really didn’t know who I was. I also didn’t know why I did what I did or, felt what I felt, most of the time. I didn’t know my Self. All I really knew was an artificial construct I had made, in response to what other people did or did not like. You like this, so I’ll be this. You like that and I’ll be that. I’d change as the ‘you’ I was trying to please, changed. I was a database of stored responses, like a puppet with strings anyone could pull.

There was a part of me, unknown ‘til then, that bristled over the idea of being a puppet or, a pet, like a dog that would do anything for a pat on the head and a biscuit. How could I hold myself so lowly in esteem?

It was then I became aware of the kind of relationship I had with myself. It wasn’t a Loving one. I wasn’t the Real me because I didn’t believe anyone would really like the real me. The one that wasn’t ‘Perfect’.

There was a legion of things about myself I didn’t like. Characteristics I condemned and rejected in the confines of my own heart. Tendencies I’d like to stamp out of existence. Pleasures I enjoyed even though I wasn’t suppose to.

I wasn’t very nice in what I believed. I wasn’t kind, either. Nor respectful. Being ‘right’ was much more important then being Understanding.

I was a dictator of conditions when it came to what I was willing to accept and tolerate. Everything had to be my idea of ‘right’ or I went emotionally ballistic. It was ‘my way or the highway.’ And this is how I acted towards myself in the confines of my own head.

My inner world ran on fuels of fear. Fear of rejection, fear of abandonment, fear of punishment and, fear of pain. I found no Courage. I found no Valor. I found no Honor. I found no Integrity. I found nothing that would have meant I had Heart or Self Respect.

I had as much backbone as a jellyfish, when it came to having Faith in myself.

For a while I wallowed in my own self pity. A victim, blaming any and every authority figure in my life for teaching me this example of how to relate to my Self. I remembered thinking as a child that I needed to learn all the big people’s rules, in order to survive in the big people’s world. What I learned was ‘Stuff everything people don’t like away in some deep dark hole inside, then pray to God it never gets out.’

Fa-la-la, I am the Light and all that. I knew I had a dark side. No matter how ‘good’ I acted. I knew I wasn’t Miss Smiles & Sunshine. Sooner or later, all those pent up, repressed, and suppressed parts of myself would start acting up, sabotaging my Life. Locking these parts up didn’t make them go away. Locking them up just made it so part of me was living in the dark most of the time. And it was the conscious part.

My subconscious lurked within me. Like my Nemesis. I couldn’t divorce myself from it. Decades of trying had proved the futility of that idea. There was no way around it. I was going to have to attempt making friends with myself. My first step was to find out why so many parts of myself were against me. It didn’t take long to learn the reason.

I had sentenced parts of myself that didn’t live up to my ideal of perfection, to live in darkness. Shut off from my acknowledgement or recognition. Shut off from any Understanding or Compassion. I made a box inside myself and stuffed all my rejected parts in it. I created my own personal hell and, sentenced all the parts of myself I didn’t like, to live there.

The problem was…,

That it was ‘me’ living in that hell of my own making. And no matter how rotten I imagined I might be, I didn’t like the feel of living in hell. It was miserable.

And boy did I feel stupid, knowing I was the one that had sentenced myself there.

I did it because I had never been taught or shown, how to Love ‘me’. I was taught that Self is supposed to be sacrificed for the ‘good of others‘.

As a result, I didn’t know how to Embrace ‘me’. I didn’t know how to Accept ‘me’. I didn’t know how to Tolerate ‘me’. Much less know how to Enjoy my own company.

And I knew it.

I knew how to be self condemning. I knew how to be self rejecting. I could come up with a list a mile long, at a moment’s notice, of reasons I was unworthy and should therefore, be sacrificed for ‘the good of others’.

For all my intellect, for all my education, I didn’t know how to be self nurturing.

I was an empty vessel. Empty of feeling any of the feelings that would have been supportive and fulfilling. Looking always to the World outside of me, to provide me with what I felt I lacked. And I was seeing this, not as a Mystic, not as a Religious devotee but, as an Engineer. Talk about a revelation.

Most of us have been taught completely erroneous ideas about the field of magnetism. We’ve heard phrases such as ‘opposites attract’. When no, they don’t. Not quantum mechanistically.

North magnetic fields only attract North poles. South magnetic fields only attract South poles.  North magnetic fields don’t want ANYTHING to do with South poles. And South magnetic fields don’t want ANYTHING to do with North poles.

Penguins and polar bears don’t coexist.

When I magnetized myself as ‘south’ or a ‘negative’ field of interest, the only people I ever attracted, were those that fit into my idea of life. They had to be ‘south’ or ‘negative’ towards me, too. Whatever it was, if I thought negatively about it myself, I’d find they’d express that same negativity, too, polarized towards me.

I’d always believed I felt the way I did because it was what everyone else told me. When according to quantum physics, everyone else had simply been mirroring, whatever I had been imagining. ‘Negative’ was all I was capable of attracting, so long as I was polarizing myself as ‘negative’, in my own attitudes.

I realized I had been the one to set the currents in motion, that had brought all the negative stuff that had washed up on my shores. I was the one that had judged myself. Everyone else in my life had been an echo. Cause. And effect. I sowed. And I reaped.

It didn’t take me long to catch on, that when it came to what I believed, I was FREE to be my own authority. Above and beyond all others. I didn’t have to wait for others to tell me what to believe, like I was some sort of answering machine being programmed in responses. I had the power to decide that on my own.

I will believe, whatever I WILL to believe.

Because I AM. And that means I CAN.

Ever since then I’ve claimed Sovereignty over my own Realms of ideas. And discovered when my ideas are connected to my Heart, instead of coming from my gut, I possess all the Self Assurance I need.

I have chosen my own beliefs, since. Especially about myself, Life and what many of us call God.

I’ve chosen to believe in the Passion of my Life.

Here’s an exercise in reclaiming and getting to know yours.

Choose any subject: money, love, God, sex, marriage, work, etc. Then fill in the sentence, ‘Money is ______’ 20 times. Or ‘Love is ______’ 20 times. Whatever subject you choose, complete the sentence 20 times.

The first few will be easy. By 7-8, things will be slowing down. And by 11-12, it will take some time coming up with new answers. But be patient. Mostly likely it’s been a while since you’ve taken an inventory of what’s in your subconscious, if ever. When you finish, look over your answers.

For each answer, ask yourself if you really believe it. It doesn’t matter where you heard it or read it. All that does matter is if you choose to believe it and accept it as True in your life.

(I’ll share a tip with you. When it comes to believing, ask the Self in your own heart. “To Thine Own Heart Be True.“ )

How does believing ‘this’ or ‘that’ make you feel? Cross off any and all beliefs that make you feel awful or negative about yourself or Life itself. Simply refuse to believe it. You can, you know.

After you’ve cleared out the list of things you don’t really believe, start adding up what’s left. Integrating them together into a Whole outlook.

Contradictions will be difficult to integrate. Water can both freeze and boil. Just not the same water, at the same time, in the same location.

See how scattered your beliefs are about any subject. And apply a basic principal of physics. Buckshot doesn’t have the same impact on a target, as a focused projectile.

There will be no right or wrong answers. This is simply an exercise is getting to know yourself and what is lurking around below the level of your awareness most of the time. Here is the software programming that’s been running or ruining, as the case may be, your life.

For an adventure, take back the Sovereignty over your own Heart and Mind.

Stand up for your Self.

And your Freedom to simply Be.

If you think about it, ‘determined’ and ‘stubborn’ describe the same energy of Willpower. We’re very Willful, which means we’re conduits for the energies of Willpower. We know how to ground it, anchor it and use it. Which adjective is used to describe us, depends on whether the person describing us, happens to agree with where we’re going or heading. So forget the labels and simply celebrate your Willpower. Concentration and our ability to focus that concentration, is a Gift. Especially when we start focusing that concentration within. The Gift of Clarity comes with it.

We bring the Light of Understanding into worlds of darkness.

We’re not sports cars. We’re trains. We may not be quick out of the starting gate but once we get going, there’s a lot of focused momentum behind us. If a sports car hits a brick wall, the brick wall wins. If a train hits a brick wall, it goes right through it.

Choo-choo, I’m the engine that could! How ‘bout you?

My daughter accuses me of never being a child. Because I focused so much on being responsible. Accountable. Sensible. And Practical. Especially when it came to money and assets.

For many years money, assets and other things money could buy, achievements and awards were my placebos of Worth. See what I had accumulated? See what I had accomplished? Aren’t I a worthy person? It was what I had been taught ‘worthiness’ looked like.

You see, I counted on these things and the appearance of these things, so other people would approve of me. Because deep down inside, I was exceedingly insecure. I really had some doubts about myself. I doubted whether or not I was ’ok’. Whether I was ’good’. Whether I deserved to be loved.

As an adopted child, I had abandonment issues. Galore. What was so ‘wrong’ about me that my own Mom didn’t want me? And since I was rejected once, it could happen again. I better not mess up with these people or they’ll give me back as defective merchandise.

Oh, I needed to feel loved and had doubts about whether I was deserving. I always had doubts about myself. Crippling doubts. I was never sure of what conditions I was suppose to fulfill to be loved. The conditions changed depending upon each person.

The only thing that didn’t change for me, was the fact that I was going to be whatever the person wanted or liked, because I needed them to like me and approve of me. I would willingly sacrifice and negate whatever part of myself required, in order not to be rejected or abandoned.

In terms of my soul, I had a garment alright. A holey garment consisting of a bunch of holes I had created by symbolically taking a pair of scissors and cutting out parts of myself other people didn’t like. Holey, holey, holey. That was me.

This is the way I was taught to relate to myself.

And it’s the way you’ve been taught to relate to yourself, too.

It’s called the Creed of Sacrifice.

The greatest act we can make to express our Love of others, is to negate the Value of our own lives. Martyrdom. It is to volunteer to be the sacrificial animal on the altar of other people’s needs. Forget our own. It is to hold the value of our own lives as inferior to others, otherwise be branded ‘selfish’.

In order for the sacrifice to count, we have to cherish whatever we’re sacrificing, of course. We have to love it, whatever it is, so the pain of denial will really be excruciating. Our road to the cross has to be slow and tortuous, if we want our sacrifice to count in moral brownie points.

For it is no sacrifice, under this definition of the concept, for a Mother to sacrifice new clothes for herself in order to buy milk for her baby. So long as she’s the kind of Mother that loves the baby more then the clothes. But it is a sacrifice, to the kind of Mother that loves the clothes, more then her baby. It is no sacrifice for a man to die fighting for his freedom, unless he’s the kind of man that would rather live as a slave.

See what I’m getting at?

In order to count it has to hurt.

There better be plenty of suffering in it.

The only way it’s easy to play the martyr and, negate ourselves for others, is if we think of ourselves and our lives…our interests, our dreams, our hopes and our joys, as worthless. I had such an inferiority complex that the only way or idea I knew to rectify it, came by imagining I could somehow gain some semblance of value, from the grave.

I used my concentration and Gift of Insight, like you have, too, to deeply contemplate this code of sacrifice.

As much as my Honor and sense of person came from it, I came to revile myself when I saw it for what it was. I didn’t love Life. How could I? I didn’t even love mine. The code I caught myself serving with every fiber of my strong willed being, was a code that served Death. On a silver platter no less.

A martyr is someone who seeks their own death. Obviously.

Isn’t that sad?

The greatest worth or value that I could imagine for my own life, was not only my own death but death by slow torture. Once I chose that as the goal I was going to pursue, it didn’t really matter how I got there.

I almost drove myself into an early grave sacrificing myself for others. Always feeling like I had to serve those in need, doing and providing whatever it was they said they needed. And forgetting about my own needs at the same time. Trying to pretend I didn’t have any.

Me and my righteousness would really holler at other people, too. I was quite sanctimonious in decrying their lack of virtue as I saw it. Their lack of willingness to sacrifice their lives, too. In short, I’d use my willfulness to beat other people over the head with all my own self judgments.

You see, raised a Catholic, all I had ever been taught was conditional love. Obey the rules and be embraced. Don’t obey all the rules and be rejected. With Guilt being used as the whip of rejection.

In God’s Kingdom there were limits. Limits on what was Accepted. Limits on what was Tolerated. Limits on what was embraced in Understanding. Limits on what was Forgiven. Limits on Compassion. And limits on Mercy.

I was so needy, so emotionally needy, as a result of being fed all these conditions on being Loved, that I was an abject failure when it came to loving relationships.

I felt I really couldn’t sink much lower. It must be True. For reasons unknown to me since I was born, I was damned.

That’s when my search turned inward.

I ran across new information on magnetic fields, quantum physics, and the adage that ‘we all create our own reality’ at the same time. Coincidence? No. Synchronicity. And everything this new information pointed to, was the same thing all scriptures had always said about ‘reaping and sowing’. But happening on an altogether different level then anyone of us had ever imagined.

If I imagine myself and feel myself to be damned, then Presto! That’s exactly what reality I created to be mirrored back to me in experience. If the only value of my own life was to serve the needy, then my life was destined to be filled with the needy. In the Play of Consciousness, some jerk was going to be required to do some horrid thing to someone else, making that someone else end up in need. All so I could feel good about myself.

How I really undermined myself was that so long as I needed needy people, I really couldn’t say that helping them ‘not to be needy anymore’, served my self interests. So whatever I did made them into dependents, so they would always be dependent upon me. People who needed me weren’t likely to leave me. See where I was coming from?

This particular self realization made me feel sick. Here I thought I was being a hero. And all I had really been doing is stopping other people from finding out they were heroes, too. So long as I always did things for others, those others never learned how much they could do themselves. They never learned self confidence. They never learned how to make choices. Since they never had to live with the results of most of those choices. I saw to that.

Ms. Fix It. I was a control freak. Insecure down to my very bones.

I was the road crew that quite dutifully went around filling in potholes, so other people’s lives would flow smoothly. And putting barricades around the ways I couldn’t get to.

As afraid as I was in screwing up, so was I afraid for those I loved and cared about, when it came them screwing up, too. Through the use of our dependencies, I would reach out to control other people and the choices they were making. I would quite genuinely swear my intentions were because I was afraid for them and I would be believed but, like any good salesman, it was only because I believed it myself.

I was really afraid of them. I was afraid they would make some choice that would lead to some experience, that I couldn’t’ “handle”.

Handle physically, in terms of manage and control. (Minimize loss.) Handle emotionally, in terms of coping skills. (Will it upset my precarious and insecure cart?) Handle mentally, in terms of ‘things I don’t want to see’. (Will my mind go blank as I attempt to wipe out a reality that I’m afraid to face?)

I was a Victim of my own imagination and beliefs. Send out a signal of ‘victim’ and attract being ‘victimized’. Send out self judgment, get back self judgment.

I did it.

To myself.

So that when the time came for me to stand before the ‘pearly gates’, I had a pocketful of suffering to show for myself.

My first instinct upon self realization, was to curse myself for being ten times a fool. Cursing myself for imperfections being the way I was taught to relate to imperfections. Perfect = good. Imperfect = Bad. Love good. Reject bad.

Following this procedure over and over through many decades was how and why I dug myself into a pit. The last thing I desired to do was dig my pit deeper.

So I changed.

There were skeletons in my closet and it was time I faced them. I began the journey through the valley of the shadow of death, in order to bring all the abandoned parts of myself out of there.

The only sensible thing to do when we find ourselves in the middle of hell, is keep going. It’s equal distance out, either way. At least by moving through it, in search of all the parts and things about myself I didn’t like and, had tried to abandon, I would be able to put it all behind me.

Sense.

Something just nagged at me. Something just didn’t make sense. Then I found it.

There’s no way the Whole, can BE whole, through the negation of any part. Even if that part is just “me“. Smucky, imperfect, human, me. I went to research the concept I had been taught and found out that the word ‘sacrifice’ comes from Latin. Sacre, meaning sacred. Facere, meaning to make. ‘To make sacred.’ ‘To uplift.‘ There’s no loss implied. No suffering, either.

Then I thought about it, deliberation and contemplation being a habit. I wondered what else I had been taught that was screwed up and didn’t make any sense. I thought about ideas like “All“. And Absolute. Where ever I looked within myself, there were beliefs nullifying any and all such concepts, as ALL. As Unity.

In place of “All That Is, Was and Ever Will Be”, was “all that is, was and ever will be, except for this and this and this and them and them and them.” Similar to the rendition The Pope, you know the person I mean, similar in its tone of bias, prejudice, partiality, bigotry, discrimination and arrogant superiority.

What my beliefs represented and expressed about myself, was that I was a completely unprincipled person. Same as the Pope is saying about himself.

When it came to values I served, my inner inventory wasn’t in all that great of shape. My Love was Conditional, therefore, limited. My Acceptance was Conditional, therefore, limited. My Tolerance was Conditional, therefore, limited. My Understanding was Conditional, therefore, limited. And what was lacking most of all, was Compassion.

And it was this inner scarcity, that was the reason I felt so needy in the first place. Why I felt rejected and abandoned. Where ever there was a limit, I had cut myself off.

I didn’t know how to be nurturing, self nurturing, in what I believed about myself, because it was the pattern I had been taught. At home. At church. And by the World.

It’s a pattern of Conditional love. Like ‘god’ was a whore who only barters for favors. A limited unlimited. An impotent omnipotence.

Notice how none of this makes any sense? Notice all the contradictions?

Is it any wonder most of us are screwed up mentally and emotionally?

I began my journey out of hell equipped and empowered by Unconditional Love. I devoted my concentration on seeking to Understand. That meant I was going to have to start suspending my judgments about ‘bad’ and start asking ’why’, instead. Always delving deeper inside myself, discovering layers of old wounds I had tried to banish.

If I was creating my own reality, if I was reaping what I sowed, I wanted to understand what I kept doing to myself. So I could stop.

I made the most selfish decision of my life.

To save my own ass.

And what I found out, was that by learning to Love my own Humanity, I became a Humanitarian. By finding out what it took to transform me and my life, I found out what it takes to transform the rest of us and our World, too.

Compassion.

Overflowing from our Hearts because we have given it to ourselves.

I introduce myself as a Complete Idiot. Made perfect by and through my own imperfections.

Care to be one, too?”