Caroline Myss - The Era of the Soul

hi everybody i thought i would do a message to you today introducing the class i'm going to start teaching next week which is called the courageous journey of inner space and it's a it's a class in which once again i'll be teaching about teresa of avila and this time i'm going to be combining it with um a little bit on the gospel of mary magdalene but i wanted to introduce why i'm teaching this class and include i guess a little bit of background on my own spiritual life which which is for me you know not the most comfortable thing to do but it's probably a little bit appropriate here let me begin by saying that i'm doing this course because of my deep devotion to the mystical teachings of not just teresa of avila but all the mystics and why do i have this deep devotion and why would you even be interested in that but i'm just going to share that my feeling my belief has come from these years and years of my own inner spiritual evolution what i believe what i'm going to emphasize in these teachings i'm going to share that with you and then i'm going to give you a background of how i've come to this the emphasis that i'm going to place on in the classes that i'll teach in the in during june is that um i've spent years now really immersed in the nature of our health in the nature of our spiritual health our psychic health our bio spiritual ecology and i've come to believe that we've reached the foothills of the era of the soul not in a spirit not in a religious way but in a organic divinity way and that the the perceptual fields that are opening around us have so much to do with the awakening of the anatomy of the soul this texturous domain within us that is mystical territory we are now asking questions that are by their very nature mystical prayers like for what reason have i been born what is the purpose of my life these are not ordinary questions who who do you think's supposed to answer that they you're asking as in the prayer take me down deep and reveal to me the reason you've given me life these are much deeper questions we it's been my observation that we suffer differently we the the depth to which we now engage in inner pursuits has opened up passages in us that i that that lead to spiritual crises dark nights of the soul in people that are not ordinary crises anymore they are spiritual in nature not religious but spiritual crises of the soul and the mystics they knew about this territory that is their territory and i i believe deeply that without their rich material as an ally that finding your way through the caverns you're opening up in yourself your you're hard-pressed to process a lot of what's opening up as the world becomes more chaotic on the outside it is a statement of how chaotic we're becoming on the inside and they offer us incredibly rich resources the mystical life today is not as it was i think centuries ago when the renowned great mystics that that established names for themselves and thus monasteries or religious orders became so famous and um mystical experiences i think are happening in ways that are far more organic to our ordinary lives my own life has been redirected and i thought i would share a little bit about that and encouraged by somebody i love very deeply and i trust very much who said that i should explain why i refer to teresa of avila as my teresa and and this person is right i suppose i should do that because i did not realize that i'd taken a sort of possessive feeling about her which i do have and i suppose i should say something about that so and it's not the most comfortable thing for me to share this part but because i now have devoted my life to teaching you about the interior life that i am now encouraging you to pursue i suppose it is a matter a bit of integrity for me to share something about this and i thought about where do i begin you know what what do i share where do i begin and i thought i would just tell the story of how anatomy the spirit came to be born because in a sense that was a hallmark mystical experience for me and because i think many of you are probably familiar with that book when i got the contract for that book it came after my doing the audio version of energy anatomy which came during the height of my work as a medical intuitive now there's a i have a lot of quirks i have so many oddnesses even i can't handle them but one of them is that once i teach something once i drain myself of a of a bank account of knowledge it's gone i mean it's i don't have the enthusiasm for i have to move on i have to move on which is why i did medical intuition and then i did sacred contracts and now i'm into it's gone and my animation to teach it is gone when once i recorded an energy anatomy and then advanced energy anatomy it was gone the problem was i had receipt i had gotten my first major book contract for energy anatomy out of random house and when i sat down to write it it was gone it wasn't that i didn't know the material anymore of course i knew it but animation for me is like i can feel the grace i can feel that assistance i can feel it i can just feel it i have always had to live alone i'd always have to be alone because that world is more real to me more present there's no way for me to communicate that to you other than to say it and i have protected this part of my life and lived it fully and so i could not feel it and when i would write it would be garbage and so it sent me into a crisis and i kept having to send my editor notes well i need more time i need more time and i had a major contract and she didn't know me and eventually i became ill i mean i developed this raging sinus infection and it went on and on and i was i was really scared and i didn't know what to do months went by months i had to get an extension for a book i couldn't write and you know what you think of yourself as an author and um and i knew i knew in my gut that this book was not going to happen because i could feel it you know what it's like it's like being in a delivery room and everyone's telling you to push but you know you're not pregnant so i then go to teach a workshop with my dear and wondrous friend norm shealy and we're teaching this workshop and it's on energy anatomy and i'm standing at the end of the classroom and at the other end of the classroom is a blank um oh what do you call those things um white board white board and i'm about to walk across the room and draw seven chakras seven circles and i stood there and all of a sudden what downloaded into me completely just boom downloaded was energy anatomy boom i'm looking at this whiteboard and all of a sudden i saw i understood in what teresa of avila would call in intellectual revelation i saw the seven chakras and the seven sacraments and the tree of life moving organically into our bio-spiritual anatomy i saw it i unders not visually i got it i understood i just boom i got it and i walked i i literally walked out of the classroom went downstairs to an office in the norms building and called my editor and i said i'm changing the book this is what i want to write this is the book and she paused for a moment and she said okay do it and energy anatomy and anatomy of the spirit was born i cannot communicate to you the wonder of that moment to me the wonder of going from not knowing something to being swept up into another way of understanding us like that and the depth of it well that took hold of my life for the next several years and but the experience of receiving something like that was also something that i would have returned to again and again and again and again and it happened again when i started to wonder about why people didn't heal why people didn't heal how come people feared healing and you see this the whole progress for me became what's inside of us where did this come from what we the chakra system the the sacraments we we seem to be wired so fantastically in the invisible in our bio spiritual nature it became this wonderment to me how could it not be it was as if i was ushered in and said look at this look then and i never had an interest in healing one day i had an interest in healing it just happened i i wondered not about healing because i never felt qualified to do that i have no background healing i went the other way i thought why would you not want to be whole why would you not want that why why are you sabotaging becoming whole why are you using wounds to manipulate people why why are you sabotaging yourself and i re and in a as i observed this one person doing that i i wondered why why would a human being do this and all of a sudden i got it that in fact the journey of life is a journey of power how we manage our power and that shifted everything for me just like that and i started to realize that power was the fundamental ingredient of the human experience but what was that power what is the essence of that and i had to know i had to know i had i had to know more that power comes from some place what what is it it's more than our mind for god's sake for heaven's sake it it was the essence of our life our life is about the management of this creative force that is housed within our form our body eventually i don't have time to go into all the years of my life but eventually everything that i had done felt inadequate i felt it just felt inadequate and then i got i started to wonder about healing from why we didn't heal i figured that out to what about healing what what can we heal what can this force in us do what what are the parameters of our soul what what is grace what what is this world what is our world what's the what's the texture in us what is that that's when i started to rethink mystical literature specifically i thought you know you know maybe maybe i'll look at ignatius loyola maybe because i was educated in a jesuit graduate school and i thought well you know maybe i'll go and look at you know john of the cross because i hear so but the one that i knew least about least about was teresa of avila and i thought the reason i looked at her was because someone had mentioned matt fox a professor of mine had mentioned that she wrote about the interior castle and it had she made mention that it had seven she described the soul as having seven mansions and i thought uh-huh seven chakras seven mansions 18 to 18. so i thought all right so i'm going to teach this workshop on her i'm not on her on the mystics christian mystics in the morning eastern mystics in the afternoon i thought i would do you know the eastern traditions in the afternoon and in that morning i had scheduled myself to teach the ones i knew the best that i'd actually studied and i hadn't the only thing i looked at was the seven mansions like all right one two three okay very fast but the others i knew i knew i accidentally grabbed theresa's book first and i thought no big deal i sit down on my stool i always teach on a bar stool and i should back up i should back up i forgot something i was writing invisible acts of power and prior to writing that i had this other experience i was standing in my kitchen and i was living in a townhouse at the time so we're going back 17 years and i was living in a townhouse and i'm standing in my kitchen and i'm thinking to myself this is so typical of heaven i was standing in my kitchen and i'm thinking to myself i love my life i just love my life i love it it was a friday afternoon it was my perfect i love friday afternoons the most and [Music] it was a gorgeous october friday afternoon the temperature was perfect everything was perfect everything was perfect and i hear a message and it says you don't have a prayer life and i it was so clear and so not me it was so clear and that i i talked to it and i said and i looked around the room and it's very difficult to describe messenger voices they are not loud but they're loud they're not you but they're clearly meant for you and i started talking to it and i said who's talking to and i said what are you talking about and and this is where my catholic background comes in i knew what i knew i knew i had just received a message i knew that i was just told my life was going to change i there's no way for me to communicate all that i knew in that moment i knew that everything i had done was just getting de-animated that all my teaching with sacred contract was going to stop i knew that i was in for a new life path there's no way that i can communicate how much i knew was going to change i was being told you are going to need a prayer life and i stood there bargaining i said but i teach all these people and i try and do good things and i'm teaching religion and i'm doing this i'm doing that i knew none of that made any difference i knew that i was being told you're going down deep inside of yourself and that's it you have no idea what i know that i knew and then i turn around and i dismiss it you know what i mean not dismiss but i was in wonder i thought this is incredible you actually care that i don't pray and the way i'm supposed to the way you want me to the way i should understand prayer and then i thought oh christ am i in for it and then i thought this is incredible both are true my the way i would put it today is that my soul went into ecstasy but the rest of me went into terror okay so what happens i was writing invisible acts of power at the time god i hope you're interested in all this because i'm just rambling and i decided to add scripture references to it and the reason was because as i was putting that book together i realized that the stories people were sharing me with me were incredible stories of divine intervention and i thought this is just like i've read in in in in the old testament the new testament the the holy books and i thought i just need to add a little of this and that and one day while i was reading all these wondrous stories people shared i thought why are these stories so alive to me and i realized they were stories of like living scriptures and grace and i thought i went into this deep state of all i could say is prayer and said you really are everywhere and bingo i had a grand mal seizure out cold and when i came out on the floor of my office i had this feeling oh my god what are you doing what are you doing okay i'm not going to go into all the rest then now i'm in that workshop i grabbed this book to teach theresa and it's and it's teresa of avila i meant to begin with john of the cross and i thought ah no big deal but then i felt i felt this blackness start that i had felt that day of the seizure in my office and i thought i was gonna have a seizure on stage and i looked and i thought if i fall i'm gonna break my neck and i froze i just i stood i said i just froze i thought but i didn't and what happened was i heard a voice and it said daughter follow me and i perked up and i i thought he was speaking to me and i i knew it was teresa of avalon i what then followed was that whole weekend i taught her work as if i was a scholar i forgot about ignatius i forgot about john i forgot about all the eastern mystics i simply taught teresa of avila as if i knew and understood her work as if i'd studied it as if and and here's the thing i remember observing myself teaching thinking where's this coming from where's this coming but i knew her work i knew it i knew it and i loved it and it just poured into me i loved every word of it i loved it i loved it i i cannot tell you how much i loved it it was wondrous to me well i was writing another book at the time when i got home that weekend i deleted everything i had been working on for nine months deleted it deleted threw it out throughout everything who throws out a book right and then i called my editor bless her soul and said you know that book we were working on we have this huge contract for i said i threw it out and so what i'm going to do is i'm going to take the work of teresa of avila and i'm going to bring it into modern times because i think people need to know the anatomy of their spirit i think of their soul i think they need to understand the mystical journey in a modern way i think they are living the mystical journey in a modern way and they need to recognize it in modern contemporary language and that's what we're going to do and then i explained to her that i had a mystical experience with teresa and you know how crazy that sounds but it didn't to me so she paused and then she said you tell that saint of yours you've got a six-month deadline and she hung up the phone i'll never forget that now monday morning which was the next morning i sat in my kitchen and i thought what have you done what what have you done what have you been through what have you done and you know what happened i get a card in the mail i don't know from whom from england right right and in it is this this card wait a minute there this book marker which i've now laminated from someone who i don't know and i'm reading the back here's the back and it says caroline i am praying for your health and protection each day may god guide you with every step with love and prayers i don't recognize the name i couldn't even i couldn't even i said is it lorette is this i don't know it says thank you so much and on the bottom on the bottom right here it says carmelite monastery teresa was a carmelite as if that wasn't enough here is the message let nothing disturb you god alone suffices saint teresa of avila that was it that was my beginning of a bond with faith in a saint i should do a whole thing with you on faith in a saint in faith period but that began an extraordinary six months for me which i won't go into now but i will refer to it in the series which is not a tease by the way we just don't have time but you don't change your life for imagination maybe some people do i'm not that way i'm a very grounded grounded person believe it or not and god gave me a very grounded nature and a very mystical life but what i do know as the years have gone by is that the teachings of these mystics offer us a profound doorway into the depths of ourselves as the world has changed so much and we are leaving traditions and familiar territory everywhere everywhere familiar territory of our of our um nation of our finances of our what the pandemic is changing as we're we're leaving everything familiar of our religions of our family structures of our sexuality of everything it has created crises i think deeper than we are able to articulate but it it is also driving us into the depth of ourselves where we have to navigate and understand the nature of our power the power we have to be resilient the power that we do have to create manage our reality our health our the construct of this world we live in and that that power is ultimately sacred it is a sacred force it's not a psychic one it's not a mental one it goes through those stages but ultimately that force as you plow through what teresa calls the journey of self-knowledge you eventually recognize this is not ordinary power i could keep it at that level i could if i keep it at that level i'll be forced to use force but i can refine it to resource to something deeper that's where i want to take you in this next series of my mystical spring that is now spilling into a mystical summer will eventually spill into a mystical autumn but that's why i'm so devoted to this i so believe in you i believe in the power of what we're made of where we're going and in the sacred guidance that surrounds all of you so here i thought i would leave this with this wondrous wondrous prayer let me see if i can find it it's a bit long but it's so beautiful listen to this blowing through the heaven and earth and in our hearts and in the heart of every living being is a gigantic breath a great cry which we call god plant life wished to continue its motionless sleep next to stagnant waters but the cry leaped up within it and violently shook its roots away let go of the earth walk had the tree been able to think and judge it would have cried i don't want to what are you urging me to do you are demanding the impossible but the cry without pity kept shaking its roots roots shouting away let go of the earth walk it shouted in this way for thousands of eons and lo as a result of desire and struggle life escaped the motionless tree and was liberated animals appeared worms making themselves at home in mud and water we're just fine they said we have peace and security and we're not budging but the terrible cry hammered itself pitilessly into their loins leave the mud stand up give birth to your betters we don't want to we can't stand you can't stand but i can stand up and lo after thousands of viens man emerged trembling on his still on solid legs the human being is a centaur his equine hoofs are planted in the ground but the body from breast to head is worked on and tormented by the merciless cry he's been fighting again for thousands of ins to draw himself out of this animalistic scabbard he's also fighting and this is his new struggle to draw himself out of his scabbard man cries in despair where can i go i've reached the pinnacle beyond the abyss and the cry answers i am beyond stand up that's from nicholas katzenzakis okay everybody i hope you'll join me next week as i begin my class on june 8th and i bid you all blessings thank you

Channel: Caroline Myss

Views: 40,232

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Id: CQdn9h-Mbxw

Length: 34min 34sec (2074 seconds)

Published: Mon May 31 2021