Tuesday, April 8, 2014

Do you hear what I hear?


      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.




No comments: