Journey to the Well: Final Thoughts

The story of Amy’s developmental stages in several previous posts called “Journey to the Well” has perhaps shed some light into the harsh landscape of our conditioning. As I ponder the nature and purpose of the social mind programs, which operate to modify the lens we look through at life, I am astonished at the magnitude of their reach into all aspects of our experience.
Just like Amy, had I continued to seek refuge in the social mind agendas, I would have come to a dry well. The thirst for a vibrant life would still burn in my heart.

How honest can we be about the social mind fears that take authority over our lives? Do we even consider that each fear harnesses a percentage of vital life force from our energetic circuit? Are we aware enough to notice when we have hooked into the program, and when limited energetic integrity is actually left for our own use?

If so little energy is left, how do we access guidance about what life brings us? Will we be able to access the intuitive voice that lets us know the appropriate time to move our family, exit a relationship, end a job, begin a new career, risk a new direction or a new friendship, if we run this intuitive energy through the entire social mind fear agenda? Can we illuminate the dark shadow created by the consuming chatter from the fear agenda and touch our natural trust. The shadow is precisely what we have repeatedly hooked into and empowered.

Often, we end up ignoring the ringing internal guidance and postpone our natural alignment with life. Now the pressure from the ignored guidance builds up. Each ignored intuition adds to our system’s fire. The result of this refusal to attend to what guidance points us toward, will literally railroad us through the feared hardships in order to complete an act of surrender. Life will force us to our knees in a sheer act of love. It will drag us from resistance to receptivity. Can we see these experiences as “love coming back for us”? Can we recognize these experiences as water from the well ?

As life faithfully creates an environment that invites awareness about resistance, it frees up the external focus in our life. It offers many opportunities to retrieve the disowned, lost and denied fragments. Our awareness becomes “soul retrieval” work. We become our own shaman.

Let’s consider that we have participated in fueling the social mind programs instead of our own life. We can do so without making ourselves wrong or feeling shame about this participation. We could observe this fact through the compassionate lens our evolutionary history. For thousands of years allegiance to the village or tribe was necessary for survival. It guaranteed our biological safety. This is deeply programmed into our genetics and continues to operate in our desire for assurances about the external world. With this in mind, are the institutions that offer such things as insurances, savings accounts, contracts, and safety rules, not operating with the same survival-safety agendas? Are they not hooked into physical outcome in the external world? Can we notice that this "savior-ship" model may no longer be congruent with who we are becoming?

Dare I extend these observations to our religious institutions? I am not speaking about the enlightened beings that walked the earth. I am referring to the doctrines that arose around these enlightened souls and became enslavers of our own internal guidance? Did the original message become absorbed by a group mind that institutionalized our spiritual lives? Has this mechanism entombed the” living” spiritual truths of our blessed prophets into dead doctrines? Where is the living water?

To disengage from all these programs and beliefs would shift the power from the village back to our precious lives. Responsibility could be handed back to us as individuals. And as the social mind viewpoint about how life works comes into question, we can stop blaming the village. We can quench the thirst and drink from our own well.

Journey to the Well: Part Three

In the last few postings of "Journey to the Well", we have followed our precious Amy and witnessed her precarious first two developmental stages unfold (postings 3/29, 4/3 and 4/29). In the final phase of Amy’s story we watch the development of her intellect, personal values and attitudes. This third stage acts as her ego’s powerhouse and governs her thoughts. Here, she may develop the will to reveal the truth. Here, also, she may develop the automatic response to retreat from truth through her defense strategies.

By the time she arrives at this level of consciousness, she has already been deeply impacted, perhaps wounded, at levels one and two. At this next level, she could solidify an image or identity and experience a limiting, fixed sense of self. As this false self continues the dance, Amy could spin further and further from the core of her true nature. Now the dance-steps take on a more dramatic texture, solid features and routines.

The energy of this third stage is intended for the development of Amy’s personal integrity, an honor code with herself. The boundaries, the ethics of what she will actually negotiate or where she will draw the line, spring from here. Her self-respect, self- trust and her confidence for acting with personal power in the world originate here in her solar plexus, which is the energetic source of this third stage. What will happen to her intuition and inner guidance if her eyes stay fixed on Mr. SM?
Will she channel her intuitive voice out of her own being for use by Mr. SM’s safety/comfort paradigm?


Addictions to external status symbols, the need to categorize, materialism, and performance anxiety could all erupt from here. Will Amy become confused or will she begin to question who she really is and how she can connect to others authentically?
This is the point where Amy can buy into what the social mind has decides is the correct, attractive image. This is the stage at which she can be totally absorbed and subjugate her personal guidance to the social mind standard. Allegiance to its fears could become Amy’s lot. Fears about being alone, about failure, about being wrong and criticized, about being abandoned, being worthless, unwanted and unloved can haunt her. Fears about being rejected and punished, and beliefs about overwhelming loss could become the anxious undercurrent of her precious life.

The society’s demand for obedience to its institutions, structures and forms can appear so real, that Amy may fall into the habit of pleasing others instead of herself. We wonder if she will compromise her personal honor code. Will she become trapped by a lack of self–awareness, siphon off her internal energy and be pulled into the external world? Will she allow other people and situations to become energetically charged by the attention she projects out toward them? Will we see her create an imitation reality that cuts her off from what is actually real?

We hold our breath and pray that Amy’s life remains her own. We plead with her to not become compelled, to not attach to stories that make gods out of a world obsessed by power, dominance, and separatism. We beg Amy to not allow society’s success symbols to become the addictions that medicate the pain of a fragmented life-dance.

Dearest Amy, please do not dedicate your life force to fuel who you are not. See through the hypnotic dance rhythm of your partner, Mr. Social Mind, and keep just the lightest touch on his arm. Break free of his embrace and leap into your own masterful steps. Take refuge in your heart’s intelligence and let it lead you into the mystery, the unknown territory that is so vibrantly alive.

May this small window into Amy's story activate the deepest compassion and understanding for all our conditioning and the suffering it brings. May it offer more awareness to the tight rope we walk as long as we remain invested in the social mind fears. May we recognize how we will attract the mirror image of these fears to our life in the form of relationships and events that prove them true. And may we remember that in this human experience we would so often rather be “right” than “happy”.

The Journey to the Well: Part Three

Let's catch up with Amy in this next chapter of "Journey to the Well" (see last posting 4/3/09) as she stands at the threshold of a defining experience. Will she abdicate responsibility for creating her life to Mr. Social Mind, or will she embrace this responsibility? If she allows her partner to be in command of all the movements on the dance floor, she will not only hand over her responsibility but also her energy circuits. Her dance partner will use these to fuel his own agenda. As a result, Amy could limit her life and creativity and simply be used to fuel Mr. SM’s institutions.

Consider the possibility of Amy becoming invested and controlled by Mr. Social Mind's evolutionary process instead of her own. What meaning might this take on for her body, relationships and available resources in the second developmental stage, the sacral chakra? It follows, then, that the more she is energetically invested in the external world of Mr. SM the more authority over her reality he can hold! This external authority significantly affects her access to personal, internal guidance. After all, Mr. SM’s agenda is safety and security, not individual development. Amy could loose sight of her true face and give up her lifeblood very early on in the dance.

As Amy’s feeling nature now develops in the second stage of the dance, it will dictate her boundaries, her relationships, her power in the external world, and her sexuality. The possibility of entanglement, the misuse of allure and attraction, confusion between pain and pleasure, melodrama and thrill seeking all appear on the horizon. Will she have enough of her own energy source available to say “no” when necessary? Will she be susceptible to energetic violations and betrayal?

Two important questions begin to arise for Amy at this stage. These inner question are: What do I feel? What really excites and fascinates me?

Will she be capable of discerning the answers? Will she be seduced by Mr.SM’s beliefs and pledge her allegiance to the social mind propaganda? Will she accept the cultural belief that financial energy equals sexual energy, that the competitive edge dictates success, and that being “on top” of your game is essential? How will she respond to the accepted behavior model of being in someone else’s business?

At a personal level, the sacral chakra, or second energetic developmental stage, energizes the feeling nature and the creative urge to express. Should Amy become unbalanced, she might identify with intense feelings and urges and appear frantic, overly sensitive and needy. This development stage is the energetic source of co-dependency patterns. Here, Amy’s developing ego learns to experience life as relational. Constrictions or build-ups at this level can flow into negative expressions and sexual extremes.

They often become Shadows, collecting unexpressed feelings and holding them in the subconscious mind. Amy could express a host of patterns that might include disassociation, deep depression, inappropriate sexual behavior, and other emotional addictions.

The push to create, that defines this second energetic level, can take various forms, the most obvious one being the urge to recreate ourselves in our children. The energetic spark to put an artistic or musical creation out into the world also rises out of the same flame. If Amy’s creative urge rushes through an unbalanced second chakra, she might have the tendency to reach for titillation and gratification from outside objects or people. If she becomes identified with such strong feelings, her personal power will be given away to them. In her hunger for intensity, Amy may take “a walk on the wild side “. Such dramas will mask her real emotions.



As Amy waltzes through this second developmental period, the base chakra’s survival/security aspects around money move into a more individual version of the society’s belief system. In general, what originates in the base chakra as social mind indoctrination about money, now impacts her life force in the second chakra in money interactions with individuals. All her expectations around money and security, which began in her first dance steps with Mr. Social Mind’s base chakra program, are now fine-tuned. These steps are now played out in the relationships Amy attracts into her life. She will get to prove the beliefs she accepted through “human homeopathy”. Her beliefs become a tuning fork for life experiences that hold identical vibrations. These proofs about her beliefs are drawn to her in packages such as betrayals about sex, power and money.

As we watch Amy’s next steps, we wonder just how she might navigate the manipulation and control we all become energetically familiar with at a very young age. Let’s keep in mind that the method of education in our families, our schools, and our religious institutions is based on the same dynamics as any political propaganda program. Amy will bump up against the indoctrination style of repetition, reward and punishment. It will be justified to her as the need for “ behavior modification.”

Be ever so still, dear Amy, least you become overwhelmed in Mr. SM’s fast moves and accept his agenda for creating good citizens instead of freedom and creativity.


Amy’s second developmental stage, her sacral chakra, empowers her one-on-one relationships. It impacts her need to control another human being, events, and the environment. As her dance takes on more complex patterns, if she follows her partner too closely, she will forget her heart’s vision and the capacity to nurture herself.

We now notice that Mr. Social Mind’s pace across the dance floor is rapidly increasing. What exactly is Mr. Social Mind trying to control with the steps he insists Amy pour her life force into? Does his motivation perhaps include an attempt to control Amy’s rate of evolution?

Please join us for Part Three as Amy’s journey moves forward.

The Journey to the Well: Part One

In the previous post, we were turning the introductory pages of a story we called, “The Hidden Treasure”. We had followed our precious child, Amy, through an initial scene of early development and left her wandering in a disorienting landscape of social conditioning. All her attention has been harnessed. Her eyes are now pointing in the direction of the external world. How this affects Amy’s energetic resonance and her body/mind is our story’s next focus.

If we follow the architecture of Amy’s development, we will notice that it seems to be hierarchical in nature. Any distortion at one level is carried forward into the next. For example, unbalanced security and survival issues at the first physical/sensual stage will take on more emotional force in the next developing feeling stage. These will then be brought into Amy’s forming mental/cognitive nature and self-image.

To help us grasp the full picture of how Amy creates her personal history, the story establishes a structure around which to organize her experience. It utilizes an energetic framework and creates architecture for examining the false self, the ego. This framework organizes Amy’s developmental stages into an energetic language, known to us as the chakra system. It allows us to follow how she manages the vital force, as it encounters the social conditioning. Amy’s dance into the landscape of “ the social mind program” begins.

The story describes Amy’s dance as a waltz with a partner called Mr. Social Mind. The first few steps determine just how tightly Mr. SM will hold Amy as he waltzes her across the dance-floor. As the music starts, we begin to wonder how easily she will be able to extract herself from his embrace and spin into her own free style solo. What now unfolds in the story brings us deep understanding and compassion about her struggle for genuine happiness in this partner’s arms.

With the first spin around the dance floor Amy begins to create her primary sense of safety and survival. The basic grounding rod begins to take shaped. In energetic terms, this dimension is called the base or “ root “ chakra. It actually controls the adrenal gland, and the health of the spine & kidneys depends on its integrity. This is the root of Amy’s sense of security, her feeling of being grounded and having a firm foundation. With this energy she will attempt to stand on her own two feet in life and be clear about her willingness to fully inhabit her body.

If her development remains stuck at this stage, feelings of despair, rage and isolation will create the world as “ unsafe “. So, now a projection of “ the self against the world (others) “ moves her into a sense of separation. If Amy attaches to this viewpoint, her behavior could expand into extreme aggression and the urge for immediate gratification.

At this point in the story, we are following Amy at a particular level of consciousness, one dictated by its focus on survival and security issues. This is Amy’s initial dance as creator of her own reality. Here, she could easily become hypnotized by her partner’s tight hold and abdicate responsibility for her own steps in the dance. Her partner, Mr. SM, might take command and hijack the innocent energy that drives her step. Our concern for Amy now escalates. If Mr. SM is successful in taking command, he will also usurp the energy needed to fuel her biology. She may become his life support instead of her own.

As Part One of “The Hidden Treasure” closes we wonder about Amy’s future. Who might she show up as, if she extracted herself from Mr. SM? If she took responsibility for directing her life force, instead of letting her partner lead, what would she create with this model of awareness?

Please stay tuned for the next chapter.

The Journey to the Well: Introduction

The more I ponder about our indoctrination over the years, the more acceptance and mercy I find for the magnitude of our struggle to be free. I feel our deep thirst for pure water. And I see the conditioning that promises water but leads us to a dry well.

The detours we take are the subject of every spiritual tradition. Their stories all point in the same direction. With great eloquence, they attempt to call us to the well. But, how do we take the detour in the first place? What reality does this misalignment to the well actually fuel? What does it appear to nurture? And what is the authentic impulse that has innocently been misdirected?

Let’s imagine we hold a book in our hands called, “ The Hidden Treasure”. As we begin to turn the pages of our book, the early years of one precious child, named Amy unfolds. It shines the light on her early scripts. We are shown the formation of her physical/sensual, emotional/feeling, and mental/cognitive natures. Step by step the story opens windows into what really determines the kind of sensual body, emotional body and intellectual body that Amy inhabits

First, we see that Amy registers no distinction between her physical structure and the emotional feelings she holds. Later, she creates an interconnected but separate emotional and mental nature. The defense strategies that form to protect any wounded fragments from these early stages become the limitations in her adult years later in the story. These wounds constrict her natural inner space, its awareness, aliveness, and freedom.

Amy’s spacious home begins to look threatening. All the adults guard her against any attempt to walk into this vibrant landscape. They interpret the leaps into this inner space as dangerous, overwhelming, and isolating. What appears to be the primary agenda of all the adults in Amy’s life is to establish some solid ground under her feet, some acceptable identity, some way of feeling significant. The society’s institutions point her toward the external world as the authority. This indoctrination from inner to outer world is intense. And so, Amy’s inner world becomes dim.

Now we watch what follows. A false self, with little ability to navigate the journey to the well, begins to appear. The thirst is still there, but even the recognition of that thirst is diminished. The architecture of this false self fills the natural space with so many structures and forms, that it overwhelms the sense perceptions of our growing little girl, and the well becomes a mystery.

The opening chapters of the story close on Amy who is desperately looking for an authentic life script. In the dense landscape of all the social conditioning, how will this precious one find the way home?

Please join me as the story continues in the next posting.

Programs and Indoctrination

I am always amazed at the small amount we take in from all the stimuli around us. Most of us right now take in less than one billionth of the stimuli surrounding us. And this one billionth reinforces what we “think” is out there! It upholds all that we have been indoctrinated into and it develops our Belief System. We might even consider that all of our social institutions and our sciences are yet another method of reinforcing the current interpretation of what we believe the truth to be.

So exactly what can we really say about our picture of the world? Perhaps the world is not at all how it looks to us. Perhaps it is only our way of looking at it. Might we conclude that our world may simply be a result of our limited interpretations? Could our reality be the result of a certain type of programming which is unable to hold the much larger field of infinite possibilities?

Let’s consider one area of our programming that overshadows many lives. Our medical model still operates largely from the assumption that we are a physical machine. This model assumes the machine has learned how to think. It assumes that the body is material, and that consciousness or thought is a secondary phenomenon. How profoundly does the old guard of this institution still affect our lives? What allegiance do we still personally pledge to its program?

Quantum theory turns this model totally around. It sees us as thoughts that have learned how to create a physical machine.

We can conclude that consciousness, interacting with itself, conceives an idea and then gives us the appearance of molecules, a physical body. How impeccable or exquisite the awareness is, dictates the resulting material form.

From this viewpoint, our physical body is a projection of consciousness. The work of Dr. Candice Pert (Molecules of Emotion) clearly shows that thoughts have receptors in all the cells. These messages of the mind are carried to the whole body.

So, let’s consider what happens when we begin to question or investigate our thinking. We use voluntary attention to re-gather the energy that was split off at a moment of a projection. Could we consider that an already existing program initiates any projection? And when we question the thought, are we not rewriting the program in that very moment?

If we become aware that our body and our experience is the result of the interpretations or our internal dialogue, our experience shifts dramatically. As a result, we will likely conclude that all our responses, including our body, are not the result of external stimuli. They are the result of our own consciousness.

Now at any moment in our experience, the question “who is thinking this thought?” becomes enormously significant. If the ego is in charge of the moment, its perceptions will print out a program, dictated by the distortions of promoting its little agenda. If this is a moment of awareness and authenticity, beyond the ego’s habits of identification and survival, the doors to our usual prison open.

We can all see this dance in our every day life. The ego labels an experience as “acceptable” and responds by moving towards it. If, however, it labels the experience as “dangerous, bad, or unimportant, it responds with resistance, becoming either aggressive or indifferent.

If we watch even more carefully, we can also become aware of how ego tries to protect itself against any overwhelming contents from the unconscious mind. So, what might we encounter should it fail to meet its needs?

Is ego likely to resort to addictive behavior patterns in an attempt to medicate the perceived pain? Such a defense program leaves no room for the beauty of our authentic free-style dance. A programmed dancer cannot access the unlimited choreography within the unified field that is our natural playground.

May we reach out with compassion and recognize our innocent misunderstanding. May we wake up from all that we have been indoctrinated into and have left unquestioned.

Our Locked Rooms

I have been thinking about optical and auditory illusions lately and how we seem to participate in these through consciousness. We seem to see ourselves as something separate from the universe. How does this viewpoint, this personal myopia, shut out everyone else and everything else on the planet? How do we penetrate through to listening beyond the filters of “my story”? Does our circle of compassion not become contracted to the point of pushing all else out of our room, in order to create a sense of ‘personal” safety. Could we basically say that we live on a planet that competes for the best prison to keep “the other” out?

All traditions invite us to widen our circle of compassion. And each tradition points to this skill as an inside job. Our beautiful collection of traditions offers a variety of useful methods. Each method uses words that will find an appeal in the vast variety of human ears that are listening. They are listening for the language that tunes to their particular ear. And yet, the quenching water does not come until all the words have stopped and the sounds of silence open the doors of our locked rooms.

How do we come out of our locked rooms, where other’s viewpoints are not allowed because they have been classified as dangerous? Our conclusions often seem so rational.
And the variety of reasons to keep the doors and windows bolted speak volumes about our relationship with life.

We might imagine that a certain something or someone will overwhelm and disorient us. Perhaps we conclude that this “other” might make us insignificant, not sustainable in some way. Or, if we opened the doors and windows the space would reveal our isolation and the fear of being forever alone. Maybe, if too much air moved freely in and out of our room, we would have no solidity, no ground under our feet.

All these possible interpretation about what might happen to us in a room that would freely breath in all and any outside air are terrifying. They supply all our “good reasons” to keep the room tightly shut and separated.

Can we examine the result? Can we recognize that our natural perception of intrinsic interconnectedness remains frozen in our hearts?