FIVE STAGES INHERENT IN AN AWAKENING:
Relating Christianity to the Native American 7-Directions, Eastern Thought, and the Birthing Process
1) The Annunciation * Mother Earth and Father Sky * The Agreement: As with Mary, an agreement that is made deep in the soul to conceive the Light, to “know” God. When this is sincerely echoed in your own life, it sets the stage for the integration of masculine and feminine: Mother Earth and Father Sky; Yin and Yang; Shakti and Shiva, etc.
2) Immaculate Conception * South/Snake/Innocence * Spiritual Conception: Initiating the process of integration, Light infuses your body, as it did in Mary’s immaculate conception and during Jesus’s baptism, as it can through a master teacher’s touch, and as it does your’s in a spontaneous awakening of light (SAL).
* This Light is feminine and referred to in Hindu as Kundalini (coiled snake), in Christianity as Holy Spirit/Holy Wisdom (Sophia), and in one Native American teaching as Bidaa.
3) Lent * West/Jaguar/Introspection * Gestation: Growth within occurs psychically, emotionally, physically and spiritually; for a while digestion can be affected. Just as with pregnancy, you have little control over the process. Your job is to be present and learn from the growth that occurs. During this time “dark nights of the soul” are interlaced with joy, insights, psychic phenomena, and the need to be alone in nature. A desire to teach from your experience may emerge. Your will slowly yields to the Divine Plan as you are centered in The Mother (you and God together) i.e., the unitive stage.
4) Good Friday * North/Buffalo/Wisdom * Labor: As if testing your spiritual unity with God, feelings of abandonment, despair, and powerlessness arise. You come face to face your resistance to Life, humbly bringing you to Divine Paradox and Essential Wisdom: by allowing, I accept what is, forgive and receive the grace to let go. A tipping point is reached;the redeeming Light of Christ is now free to transform and release ego from the captivity of resistance. Your identity is with the Divine.
5) Easter * East/Eagle/Illumination * (Re)Birth: With non-separation, you become the space wherein the Divine fulfills itself through you. This is characterized by expanded wisdom, and an end to fears, negative habits, and identifying with your ego. You grow without struggle, have a reverence for life, and spontaneous live in the moment as you, just as Jesus, “sit at the right hand of the Mother,” your rightful place, and become a manifestation of the Divine Spirit. No longer you and God; you are one with God; that is, you are not separated from All That Is. (This separation was one of perception, not Truth.) True service begins. Knowing yourself as Love, you see that Divine love in all beings. You may begin the journey towards resurrection praying to All There Is, but you end by blessing All There Is — Your life becomes the prayer.
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© 1999 * Barbara Atkinson
