THE SACRED PURPOSE OF BEING HUMAN
by Jacquelyn Small

Several years ago, I came across some words of the European mythical historian, Gareth Knight, that caused everything to fall into place about who we are and why we are here. He said that it is the refusal to come down to Earth, literally, that is the cause of the bulk of spiritual pathology and the root of all disease, ignorance, and what we call “sin.” It is a rejection of the work of our Father in heaven, he explained, adding that until physical existence is seen and willingly entered into as sacred, we cannot complete the Nadir initiation on earth and fulfill our purpose here.

The “Nadir initiation” is one that can only happen here on earth, as it is the coming fully into ourselves as spiritual beings living in human bodies, with the awareness that our purpose here is to bring spirit into all our human ways of being. God spiritualizes matter; we are here as God’s ambassadors, to materialize spirit.

I’ve seen so plainly that, when people are truly suffering from low self-esteem and feelings of meaninglessness and loss of hope, it always boils down to their feeling that being human is unclean, and definitely unspiritual. The underlying feeling is that it’s wrong to be human, and that the mistakes they’ve made have ruined them. Perhaps they’ll even burn in hell. There’s always within them this devastating split between good and evil, right and wrong, with the mistaken notion that to be human we are to leave these unclean bodies and float around like spirits or angels. And as we all know so well, a Self divided cannot stand. Here, I’m reminded of Sri Aurobindo’s counterpart, The Mother, and her beautiful statement in this regard:

“People are used to thinking that anything higher than they has to be divine beings – that is, without a body – who appear in a burst of light. But it isn’t like that at all – a new mind is being formed. And the body is learning its lessons – all bodies, all bodies.” It is my conviction that we’re coming into a new stage of our awakening now; it’s time we realize who we truly are and why we are here. Perhaps this is the ultimate healing and spiritual awakening we all seek.

SEEING YOUR HUMAN LIFE AS SACRED

To maintain a healthy motivation to “come clean” from any unhealthy way of living, your life must be imbued with a sense of greater identity and sacred purpose. When you step into this greater Self (that you already are, by the way), your identity actually shifts to a healthier and higher sense of selfhood; you are no longer that same person who had lost hope or journeyed into severe dysfunction. Whether we are living in a mansion or under a bridge, this is the key for all recovering human beings — to turn inward and allow the true and greater Self to shine forth, and then to live as that one. This compassionate, essential Self of ours, when acknowledged as legitimate, has the power to re-awaken inspiration and bring spirit back into our lives.

God obviously created the human kingdom. So human, we are indeed supposed to be. Deep in our hearts, we all know there is something of mysterious value about the very act of being human. Surely we’re not to be considered God’s mistake! And though this planet is currently in a sad state of chaos and deep sorrow, we are to stick with it, no matter what. It’s evident, though, that for most, we’ve gotten stuck in the human condition and we simply don’t remember our true purpose for being here, or how to move on from this point in our evolutionary journey. I know how easy it is to get drawn into unconscious behavior that takes me down instead of up, often not even realizing I am doing this. That is, until some disaster strikes and forces me to take a hard look.

HUMANITY’S EMOTIONAL BODY IS IN NEED OF DEEP HEALING

Nearly every day I hear from people who are deeply troubled from some aspect of living in today’s complex, and often callous, world – seeking recovery from disillusionment, betrayal, sorrow, addiction, or loss of meaning and hope. We seem to so easily lose touch with what truly brings contentment to our minds and hearts, so busy complicating our lives with countless distractions from the things that really matter to us. In all this confusion and meaningless pursuing, many people today have even lost their passion for life. Negative emotions tend to build upon themselves, creating more and more unhappiness.

When our life starts running off course, we tend to move from extreme to extreme in our feeling nature. We vacillate from emotional flatness to excessive cravings; from sexual and relational avoidance to codependence and sexual or romantic obsessions; from mental rigidity to over-stimulation; and on up into the heights of spiritual emptiness or fanaticism. Every human affliction can be seen as some form of either “too little” or “too much” of something that imbalances one’s emotional life. Then, we actually create our “story lines” based on how we feel. As a therapist, I’ve observed that people can even become addicted to their own suffering, and will unconsciously set about creating more and more of it.

Yet, here’s some good news! Science is now catching up with us and beginning to validate the importance of our need for emotional happiness, even to our physical health. Research in the new area of mind/body medicine is now replete with how we store repressed emotions in our neurochemical network, which then become addictive. (For example, see Newsweek Magazine, Sept. 2004; the movie What the #!?!! Do We Know?; and Candace Pert’s book, The Molecules of Emotion.) These habitual emotional reactions, it is now known, are the driving force that guide our behavior and the choices that we make. The reactions that come from unprocessed emotions are signs we are still partially living in the past. Our present will then be contaminated everywhere there is an overlap between a present experience and a memory from our earlier life. Therefore, it is crucial that our unconscious, unhealed, distorted emotions be brought to consciousness for us to live a life based in truth.

Often I hear people say they are desperately seeking ways to step out of their past, sick and tired of being burdened by old unhealed issues that no longer serve them. And interestingly, according to the research mentioned above, your brain cannot tell the difference between a memory and an actual here-and-now event in terms of how it processes the information. Memories held in our body/mind become the stimuli for addictive reaction patterns to spontaneously burst forth.

WHAT IS EUPSYCHIA?

You may not have ever known this, but the word “eupsychia” means “the well-being of psyche.” For years now, we’ve been implementing methods that take us inward to discover through our own direct experience how rich and wholistic our psyche’s subjective life is. In our healing programs with hundreds who come from all walks of life, we’ve observed how transformations occur through emotional release, and then balancing our minds with thoughts grounded in the truth of our nature.

Through the use of music, the breath, meditative autohypnosis, symbolic artwork, and transpersonal group processing, these deeper strata of the psyche open and pour out its gifts. This work accesses both the personal and the collective unconscious mind. It reaches into the cellular healing that releases addictive and blocked emotions, as well as offering us ways to transcend time and space and travel out-of-body into the larger realities where spiritual initiations and revelations are accessed. Turning inward, we become conscious not only of what ails us, and the ability to release any pent-up emotions holding us back, we also access and experience the radiant beauty of our inner core Self. This kind of inner work turns out to be the healer of all human dysfunction and self-defeating lifestyles.

For psyche’s well-being, it’s urgent now that we learn to live from our bigger story, the life of our soul, which is the beginning of a much stronger, down-to-earth spiritual life, where a still-needed daily practice will bring us fully into our newfound greater Self. Most people know intuitively that they have a greater Self. But to gain true knowledge of something we must enter into complete union with that which is to be known; we must actually experience it. Our most dramatic healing method, Integrative Breathwork, affords us this potent, life-enhancing opportunity. Therefore, I see Eupsychia’s work as an evolutionary psychospiritual therapy that goes well with any other method of healing you might be using.

Our philosophy is that healing ourselves and helping others is all one process, and that the true healer is within. We see that healing happens in non-ordinary mystical states of consciousness, so our methods take us there. When we can clear our emotional bodies, we become “transparent,” able to live completely in the now with integrity, and with more joy of being alive. We not only leave behind our personal “little stories,” but help to re-shape humanity by our modeling a more integrated and inspired life.

The goal of Eupsychia’s work is Self-empowerment and expression of one’s soul’s purpose in life. We are all teachers and students alike, pioneering this new work of “arting ourselves,” so we can realize our sacred purpose for being in this world as spiritual beings learning to be human. It is our time now to awaken to our full responsibilities as the offspring of our Creator God.

THE CALL TO COME WHOLE, OR HOME

I needn’t remind you of how much trouble our world is in today. I’m convinced that some kind of call has gone out, perhaps from our very soul, and a new kind of living is crying to come forth. Being a teacher of this work now for nearly 30 years, I’ve been fortunate to learn so much about who we are and why we are here from all the spiritual seekers I get to meet and work with.

I see that though many reach out for help today with personal issues or floundering relationships, it is obvious to me that something basic has been missing not only in our personal and work lives but in a lot of health care and religious institutions as well. I’ve come to believe that what’s being left out of most human living today is the Self, our incarnated soul. Even our psychologists and religious teachers are failing to teach us who we really are and why we’ve come to Earth.

This means that the very core of our nature capable of inspiring, healing, and transforming us is being virtually ignored. We have become fixated on the ego here, trying to fix it or feed it to make our outer lives more successful. But the ego has never come close to being wise enough to run a human life. Egos don’t know how to open our hearts, or take us into a creative, intuitive, spirit-filled life. We’re forgetting how to live the simple, natural way of just being our real Self, the incarnated spiritual soul. It is my conviction that this missing link must be addressed if we are to ever experience the bliss of being whole. I believe we are in dire need of a perceptual adjustment, to come back to the essential truth of our nature. How many more wake up calls do we require?

I hope to see you at some of Eupsychia’s events this year. We are dedicated to furthering this work to the best of our ability. But we do need your help. Please do show up, and tell others about our work. The Eupsychia process can become a pathway for you to access, identify, and modify the basic unhealed patterns buried in the depths of your psyche that are holding any human dysfunction in place. Until we root out our core woundings, these imbalances in our feeling nature continue to re-create themselves in all our relationships and life situations.

We crave the thrill of impassioned living. When we can no longer feel inspired and creative, our minds go dull and we begin to lose heart. Since we are already filled with so much unused or misdirected passion, why not start today throwing ourselves wholeheartedly into a whole new, life-enhancing way of being, wherever we spend our time. On a path of Self-discovery, there’s no one outside us who can do this for us -- we must be the change we seek.

We are already standing in the Self we came here to be; there are just unfortunately many layers of defenses built around us, blocking us from being it. Yet, no matter how hard we may try to deny it, our very essence is spiritually imbued with life-giving qualities. Our basic nature is not emotional moodiness and reactions; our basic nature is love. There is a sacred purpose to being human. And it’s time we all start remembering this and living as the Self we came here to be.

There is obviously someone inside us all today who is nudging us to notice that we are bored with our old ways and ready now to move on. This is our true Self calling us to step out of any unconscious living as an inauthentic person and “come whole,” or home. I sincerely hope to see you at some of Eupsychia’s events this year....and that you’ll tell others about our work. So, if we’ve never yet done this, perhaps one day soon we will meet face to face. Until then, may your journey of awakening be filled with thrilling insights and the joy of knowing what a magnificent being you are!