Tag Archives: the 8 winds

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I Am Not Afraid

Hope all of you have been well despite the hoopla created by the Corona Virus around the world.

Me and my family are doing well. Not much has changed for us. My husband and I still go to work. I still work from home most days and go into the office 1-2x a week. My husband is there every day. We work in steel fabrication of public works so nothing has changed really except that our shop workers have been limited to 10 people per shift. So we opened another location so they could keep production levels up. Those who are considered most at-risk for getting the virus have been cleared to work from home or have been given extended leave (paid). Thankfully, we are a strong enough business that we can do this for as long as needed. Most want to continue working because – a productive person is a happy person.

The kids have been home since March 14th and started online learning last week. They, of course, want to start on their work first thing in the morning which can make it hard for me to juggle three kids and working, but I do it. My experience as a teacher and school counselor has definitely assisted me with this! The kids love school this way for the most part but my middle child wishes he could go back to school. Bless him.

My mom and step-dad are at their country home living life as normal and not afraid one bit about the virus despite both having underlying conditions. They are both bummed that their social outlets have been cancelled, though. They are avid church-goers and also participate in a choir. I do hope that this shelter in place ends soon so they can resume their activities. It is much worse for an older person to be isolated than a younger one. Thankfully they are able to watch my nephew during this time to keep busy and active.

My MIL is not concerned about the virus and still comes by to visit and goes about her daily activities. She likes to inform us how her siblings are freaking out about it, though.

I’ve noticed when I’m out and about lately (shopping for groceries or driving to work) that there seem to be more people on the roads than a week ago. There are also more patrol cars. When I am in stores the mood is less tense, which I welcome. I was avoiding the stores not because of possibly becoming infected but because people were so full of fear that it would make me anxious and/or ill. So I guess I was scared of getting infected –  infected by fear! It is nice to go out and not feel that. Perhaps all the fearful people are hunkered down at home, terrified to go outside?

My daughter informed me that her friends are referring to this virus as the “Boomer Remover”. I almost choked on my breakfast when she told me. I later told my “Boomer” MIL about the name and she burst out laughing. So refreshing to have laughter during such “serious” times. 🙂

Sleep and Dreams

Some other good news is that I have been sleeping really well since last Friday. Yay! No more difficulty going to sleep. No more frequent wakings. Just, deep, restful, dream-filled sleep.

With the increased sleep I have been feeling that “not alone” feeling in the night and during the evenings before sleep. Not knowing who or what the presence was, I say my prayer of protection and drift into dreamland. A couple of nights ago, though, I woke suddenly and saw my Himalayan salt lamp had turned on by itself. It freaked me out a bit but I got up and unplugged it and went back to sleep. Then last night I woke hearing someone say, “We have been watching you.” lol My response was, “That’s great………..” lol

I’ve had a few dreams of note.

In one dream I was at the doctor’s office getting a check-up. The doctor was Dr. Now from My 600lb Life, which was very strange! He was giving me a breast exam and talking to me about an upcoming surgery. He then got out this strange instrument and pressed it into the area just below my ribs, where the ribs meet. He told me he was trying to hook it into my esophagus. I told him it hurt and he suggested I take a small pill that would make me feel spacey and not feel pain. I asked, “Can’t you just do a chest x-ray?” He nodded and said he could. I told him, “I think I had one done in 2011. Maybe you could get my records?”

There was more to the dream but that was the part that stood out. My take on it is that I was getting spiritual work done on my solar plexus in the dreamstate.

In another dream I was back at school, at a college. I recall walking up to a dorm room and standing at the door, #224. I unlocked it and went inside. It was full of young women. Some were sleeping, others sitting together and talking. I sat on my bed and then tried to get some sleep but one of the women kept talking to me. She asked me when I wanted to schedule my internship in the advanced education field I had opted to study – another Master’s degree in teaching. I told her that I had changed my mind and really didn’t need to or want to do it anymore. For some reason I mentioned Montana and how I hated the cold, blustery winters but loved the beautiful mountains. When I spoke of Montana I got a very dreamy feeling and kept wanting to go back to sleep.

My feeling about this dream is that it was me considering yet another path or lesson in this life. I decided it was not what I wanted to do. The mountains and Montana represent a spiritual destination – could be Home or a feeling resembling Home. The sleepy feeling I was having indicates an avoidance and lack of awareness. It is a preference to remain unaware, comfortable or without the knowledge this new lesson could bring.

I’ve had many, many other dreams and dream encounters but most are lost to me now. Once I wake they fade quickly because I have so much to do during the days now – schooling my kids takes up most of my morning. So dreams and the spiritual have taken a back seat to life. I have brief memories of some Kundalini energy here and there, but it is hard to recover.

The Future

My gut feeling and intuition about the Corona Virus pandemic is that most of the fear mongering and Collective fear-based reactions will lessen once we get into the summer – June being the turning point. I don’t feel this means the virus will be “beaten” but that the fear will have abated for the most part and interest will be more on rebuilding and getting back to focusing on living rather than on death.

A quote has been coming to me whenever I think of the quarantine and shelter in place rulings being made all over the country. That quote is, “Every man dies. Not every man truly lives.” You may recognize it. It is from Braveheart.

Hunkering down, waiting out this virus for fear of death is no way to live. A person can only live in fear so long before it consumes them entirely leading to full-on apathy or full-on rage. These are the two directions the emotion will take most people. Prolonged fear and living in the fight-or-flight condition can and will lead to illness and death. Many people lived in complacency and/or apathy prior to this virus. It is likely they will return to that. Some will “wake up” from this experience, most will not.

My hope is that people will at least learn that living in fear is no way to live and recognize just how much fear has dictated and continues to dictate their life and decisions. Maybe for some this will be the “wake up call” they need to change?

We are eternal Beings. The body is just a vessel, something we use to experience the high’s and low’s of life. It is guaranteed that we will suffer while we are in the body. It is also guaranteed that the body will die.

I continue to be reminded by my guidance to “Follow the 8 Winds”:

The “eight winds” are eight influences that agitate and inflame the human heart and mind.* They consist of four favorable circumstances (prosperity, honor, praise, and pleasure) and four setbacks (decline, disgrace, censure, and suffering). Their contents are roughly as follows:

Prosperity: to obtain what one desires

Decline: to suffer loss

Honor: to be admired and praised in one’s absence

Disgrace: to be criticized and defamed in one’s absence (behind one’s back)

Praise: to be admired and praised directly

Censure: to be criticized and defamed directly

Pleasure: to be happy in body and mind

Suffering: to suffer in body and mind

Source

The key to overcoming these is to find balance through non-attachment. You can read more here.

Currently, with the fear of the virus being propagated everywhere, the main attachment people are having is to life via their body. Meaning, they don’t want to lose their body or suffer the pain that may or may not come with it. Others are fearing the loss of loved ones – so they are attached to others and what those others bring to their life.

I am not afraid of my own death or the death of anyone else in my life. I know if I lose a loved one that I will grieve but I also know they are not truly gone, just in another place, a place I am able to contact when I choose. Similarly, others in my family are not afraid because they know what I know. We know pain and loss are possible, but we don’t dwell on it. We choose to operate in the moment, day to day, without fear of “what if”.

The quote above still echos in my mind as I type this. What is it to truly live? I know, for me at least, it means to live from my heart, without fear, taking life by the horns and riding that bull until the very end.

One thing is for certain, though, “it [all things] will pass.”

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Rainbows, Butterflies and Duality

A synchronicity has been presenting itself to me over and over these past couple of weeks. Usually it comes in pairs but other times it is just that I notice it briefly. The specific symbol is the rainbow.

Honestly, it has taken me a while to notice the sign. I even had a dream filled with rainbow eggs and shrugged off the symbolism of the rainbow after seeing a friend of mine from Shasta write about his own rainbow dream the very next day.

Rainbows to me equate to “the pot of gold” and “hope”. I haven’t been feeling particularly hopeful the last few weeks. In fact, I feel uninspired, unmotivated and stuck in the mud. I know this is purposeful and I am acutely aware of the Equinox portal (stargate) and the peeling away of the last remnants of the False Self, parts I seem to cling onto for dear life and are just a PITA all around. Just so happens, tomorrow is the next section of the Equinox portal as told to me by my guidance. April 7 all hell breaks loose. Or something like that. I am not shaking in my boots or anything over here. I’m in a “Whatever” shrugging my shoulders mood at the moment.

Anyway, believe-it-or-not, I think the rainbow symbol/message to me is not about a pot of gold or some “reward” for all my hard work. Actually, I believe it is more along the lines of symbolizing duality and bridging Heaven and Earth. Somehow we’ve got to straddle the razor blade of duality to find and establish our direct link to the Divine. It reminds me of the 8 winds in Buddhism and the lesson of non-attachment.

Worthy persons deserve to be called so because they are not carried away by the eight winds: prosperity, decline, disgrace, honor, praise, censure, suffering, and pleasure. They are neither elated by prosperity nor grieved by decline.

The more I internalize this lesson (which seems never-ending) the more I recognize that it is the not the attachment we are meant to avoid, nor the emotions that arise from it. Instead, non-attachment is not becoming the effect of the inevitable emotions that will arise from attachment. We breathe through the emotions, whether they be good or bad, and then allow them to pass. We let ourselves learn from the experiences and flow with them. Both “good” and “bad” are beautiful. We recognize we are the experience and do not judge our reaction. This is allowing. Attachment is part of the human condition, thus, it is part of why we became human in the first place.

It is important to be impartial towards such perceptions we receive and to determine not to be driven by emotional expressions. Our path to enlightenment will be obstructed when we assign a sense of influential authority on our feelings and on our lives by the experienced situations – rather than becoming unswayed by their impact. Source

Even more interesting is that as I am writing about the rainbow and remembering all the many synchronistic signs from it, I recall I have been seeing butterflies quite a bit, too. Then I hear part of a song and it makes me smile. “It’s not always rainbows and butterflies, its compromise that moves us along”. Duality again. 🙂

The deeper I go within, the more pockets of resistance I encounter. Resistance that I never knew existed pops up. It’s usually always resistance to those things I judge as being “bad” or “non-optimum”. Yet sometimes there is resistance toward things others would be attracted to. Resistance to success, power, self-praise. Oh how worthy yet unworthy I am all at once. So paradoxical, yet that is the point I think.

Like my friend wrote recently, we must Know the self fully before we can destroy it.

It’s a curious thing that my self has to be healed, strengthened, and built up, only to then be dissolved. (There is an old saying in spiritual practice that you must have a self before you can get rid of the self. I think this is what it refers to. You cannot have sustainable spiritual transformation without the psychological healing, otherwise you end up with a completely fractured personality.)

My guidance often reminds me to “relax and just enjoy the experience of life.” It is funny how difficult it is to do. I know I use to do it. I remember doing it in childhood. I see my own children doing it every day. It is possible to be that way yet be “grown up” and “responsible”. It is similar to being “worthy” and “unworthy” at the same time. If we can be both of those, then why not a grown-up, responsible child at heart? I like the sound of that!

So, my goal through this next portal/gateway/stargate section is to stop resisting. To stop rejecting things I perceive as “bad” to the point that experiencing them does not create a resistance reaction within, but rather an understanding and appreciation for the fleeting moment I have been given to experience duality is all its glory.