READ: God is IN the People by Jeff Brown

God is IN the People: An excerpt from ‘Soulshaping: A Journey of Self-Creation’

At the heart of Soulshaping is a profound faith in the human experience, in the karmic significance of our personal identity. This stands in real contrast to some of the detachment models that are gaining favor in Western culture. These models present true-path as something distinct from the emotional body, as though our usual self-identifications are inherently inauthentic, as though our physical forms are inferior. At the extremes, they seem to suggest that God made a mistake when she placed us in human bodies. These models worry me and present an image of heightened consciousness that often feels more robotic than human, more heady than hearty.

Soulshaping is not a detachment model. It is an immersion model. It is about jumping into life, immersing ourselves in our feelings and experiences in an effort to learn what we need to expand our soul’s consciousness. It is about “feeling” God, not “thinking” God. It is about honoring our personal identity and our physical form as not only the “vessel” for the soul, but as the embodiment of the soul as well. Embodied spirituality.

To be sure, there are times when detachment is necessary: when the suffering is too much, when we need a peek into a vaster reality. Indeed we are far more than our monkey mind, our neurotic attachments, our linear lens. But to live in perpetual detachment is to miss the moment altogether. It is to trip out of the body that carries the karmic seeds for our transformation. It is to leave Earth before our time.

The most inclusive answer is to work on eradicating our misguided notions of “I” until our notions of I-ness become directly linked to who we really are, to a conscious awareness of our soul-scriptures for this lifetime. To do this we may have to become initially effective at detachment techniques. But then, when we are ready, we come back down to Earth and work with what lives inside us. This means learning how to cultivate our bodies as gardens of truth. This means calling ourselves on our detachment from our shadow. This means doing the often-difficult work to clear our emotional debris and gain control over our relational patterns. We clear our emotional debris because it creates space inside for our authentic self to emerge, and also because inherent in those feelings and memories are the lessons we need to grow in our spirituality. Our thoughts are only illusions when they do not reflect who we really are, our emotions only wasteful when we are not seeing them all the way through to the spiritual lessons they contain.

When we are aligned with our authenticity, our feelings and thoughts become instruments of true-path, direct expressions of our highest intentions. In this more authentic state, we become much more effective at attracting what we want from a universe that is only interested in authentic expansion. Nothing feigned will do.

Our humanness is the “I” of the soul needle. It is our soul clay. It is the heart of our magnificence. God is in our humanness, God is in our connectiveness, God is in our broken hearts, God is in the people. I-God.

A former criminal lawyer and psychotherapist, Jeff Brown is the author of “Soulshaping: A Journey of Self-Creation,” recently published by North Atlantic Books. Endorsed by authors Elizabeth Lesser and Ram Dass, “Soulshaping” is Brown’s autobiography — an inner travelogue of his journey from archetypal male warrior to a more surrendered path. You can connect with his work at www.soulshaping.com

Read more from VividLife.me bloggers:

YOU ARE SACRED PURPOSE by Jeff Brown

You are Sacred Purpose. You are not your shame, your fears, your addictions, your games, your guilt, the internalized remnants of negative messaging… You are not your resistance to your true path … You are not your self-doubt… You are not your self-distraction patterns. You are not your escape hatches… you are not your pessimism about a life of meaning and purpose. You are not here merely to survive and endure.

Are You Out of Your Mind? by Ed and Deb Shapiro

One of the most insulting things someone can say to us is, “Are you out of your mind?” implying we somehow mistaken or even crazy. But what if it is actually the coolest thing we could say? What if being out of our mind means we are not disturbed by the madness of our mind and are more in touch with our feelings, heart, and freedom?

About: Jeff Brown: A former criminal lawyer and psychotherapist, Jeff Brown is the author of “Soulshaping: A Journey of Self-Creation,” and the just released “Ascending with Both Feet on the Ground”. Endorsed by authors Elizabeth Lesser, Oriah Mountain Dreamer and Katherine Woodward Thomas, “Ascending” is a collection of Jeff’s most popular spiritual graffiti—quotes, soul-bytes and aphorisms frequently shared in social media. He is also the author of “Apologies to the Divine Feminine (from a warrior in transition)” and the producer and key journeyer in the new spiritual documentary - Karmageddon- which also stars Ram Dass, Seane Corn, David Life, Deva Premal and Miten. You can connect with Jeff’s work at www.soulshaping.com

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