When I began this journey of looking into
the subconscious mind (the spirit), I saw everything in symbols. At first this
was both frustrating and hard for me. Most of the time I needed to look up the
symbols I was seeing.
One of the symbols that I saw while I was
looking at my husband intrigued me; it was the symbol of the Vitruvian Man by
Renaissance artist Leonardo da Vinci. Although made famous by Leonardo da
Vinci, the figure known as the Vitruvian man is actually named for the man who
created him, the Roman architect Vitruvius. Vitruvius, a proponent of the
Sacred Geometry of Pythagoras, designed temples based on the proportions of the
human body, believing them to be perfect. This perfection, wrote Vitruvius, was
evidenced by the fact that the extended limbs of a perfectly proportioned human
fit into both the circle and the square. According to Pythagorean tradition,
the circle represents the spiritual realm; the square, material existence, so
the human body represented the perfect marriage of matter and spirit, which is
reflected in its proportions.
So
in fine, the meaning of the symbol is that when our bodies and our spirits
unite and become one, it creates this perfect union. I knew that the symbol was
both significant to me as well as my husband. It let me know how important it
was for me to unite with both my body and my spirit. It was a good reminder and
gave me courage to continue on this journey.
Sometimes we walk around thinking and
feeling like God isn’t hearing and answering our prayers. Well that just isn’t
so. It’s not if he answers; it’s how we recieve the answers and how we come to
learn how to listen. It is not a generalized prescribed way of listening,
everyone hears differently and it’s up to us to find out how WE listen.
After seeing symbols for a while I started to
get one word through the spirit. These single words led to a fullon sentence.
Some people don’t get words or sentences at all. Some feel the answers, or get visuals
that come to their minds. Another form of getting answers that I’ve seen is
through trust. Do we really know how God feels about us? Does God already have
that kind of trust that was formed from even before we came here? I have seen
this evident while working with others that they struggle to find the answers
but I see that they have already formed a trust with God and He expects them to
search, ponder, make a decision, and then present it to him. You can be led in the right direction once you get started; that is an amazing way of getting an answer. God already trusts
you. That is another reason to turn towards your spirits because you need to
know what kind of relationship you already had with God before you came here.
If we could choose right and wrong before we came here then we know that
there was more that was going on before we came here, than we realize now.
In his autobiography the prophet Spencer
W. Kimball gives a great analogy. He says, “When a man owes a man money, the
man who owes the other man money, always holds it against the man who he owes.”
Before we came to earth we covenanted with God that we would keep His
commandments and do all that we could to serve others and find out who we were before we came here. So when we blame God, in some form or another, it is
because we are indebted to Him and we are not living up to our covenants that we
made while we lived with Him. We could be holding it against Him by ignoring
promptings, avoiding change, angrily going through trials instead of allowing
ourselves to learn, falling when the winds prevail against us, not trusting in
God's plan by taking too much control, not allowing others to learn and grow,
blaming Him for how our life has gone after all that we’ve been prompted to do,
etc.
The following is a good exercise that I
recommend to people. When you are praying, say your thanks then let go of the
control. Letting go of the control is
the hardest part because we take control out of fear; fear of being led
astray, fear of not believing in our own abilities to get the answers right
away fear of being deceived. If we don’t learn to give control to the Lord
than we will always be in constant conflict between our spirit and our body.
Our spirits naturally want to connect and
praise God. We control that outcome by controlling how we connect with God,
and how we sometimes get our answers. For instance, if we want to receive answers, we sometimes don’t realize that we are taking control by saying in our minds, “this is the only way I hear answers.” If we do that, then we are in control and not the spirit. We have to learn to submit to the
spirit. When we are saying our prayers, we should be open to other ways of
receiving answers. By praying and letting go, the spirit takes control of
what we need to pray for, because after all God already knows what we need and
sometimes we may be surprised at what we are being guided to pray for. This is just another witness of the fact that God truly knows who we are and
what the intent of our heart is.
One type of control that we
sometimes use is called logic. This is used both for good and for bad. If we
use this too much then we sometimes can block the spirit from entering into our
minds and hearts, thus leaning on our own understanding. I am a pattern reader;
I look for patterns in everything. This is both a gift and a curse because when
you use logic when looking for patterns then we can be misled. When you use the
spirit when looking at patterns in life, then you can be led to further
knowledge.
I
could tell when I was using too much logic and my own energy when I started out
helping other people. I would be both spiritually and physically exhausted when
I was done helping another person. This should not be the case. When using the
spirit properly we are both edified and have more energy. We are excited that we were able to help the
person and for being able to let go of the control and let the spirit
flow. A good visual that I give to
people on this is to imagine the spirit flowing through you like a gentle
breeze flowing gently over your face. Most of us do not realize how much we
take over the control so it is vital for us to be more aware and change.
Have you ever noticed that people are
attracted to you in some form or another, or just the opposite? I liken this to
the parable of the fig tree. Our spirits know each other our conscious minds
do not. We do not have the veil over our spirits but over our minds. So when we
see another person and we know them, it’s because our spirits know them. If we
know that they can help us, then our spirits know this. If we are not united and are not one with our
spirits we can become like the fig tree, producing beautiful flowers and not
producing fruit. Our fruit is designed not just for ourselves but for others to
enjoy. If we are not becoming one with both our spirits and our bodies then we
are just a tree with pretty flowers to look at but not to fully enjoy. When we
are uniting our spirits with our bodies then we can become like a temple, where
the spirit dwells, where we do service for others both here and on the other
side of the veil, and become a servant of the Lord.
What I learned from seeing symbols at
first was to dig deeper. Find the roots that connect us to God and
release the things that keep us from moving forward. I love the quote that
says, “if it doesn’t challenge you, it won’t change you."
Leonardo da Vinci was right on with the
Vitruvian man, when we are united both body and spirit we are perfectly
proportioned.
