Soul's Code

We have 11 Moon Centers in our body, and we dwell in each one for 2 1/2 days. Every woman’s rotation pattern is unique, and stays with her for life

BEING THERE: EMMA — We have moon centers! This was news to me.

And it arrived at a workshop in Espanola, New Mexico at the Sadhana Solstice Retreat. The revelation: just how attuned our female bodies are to the rhythms of the moon.

I had always known our general sensitivity to the tides in terms of our menstrual cycles, but I didn’t have a full understanding of the beautiful pattern we move through physically and energetically every 27.5 days.

We have 11 Moon Centers in our body, and we dwell in each one for 2 1/2 days. Every woman’s rotation pattern is unique, and stays the same her entire life. This seems to be fairly basic and essential info about our Being. Yet what do we learn in school? Hardly anything about our own essence, it seems.

GUEST COLUMN: DAVID RICKEY
It’s common to pray for people’s health, and we’ve even heard of believers petitioning God for everything from rain to the winning touchdown. So when Soul’s Code heard about the group, Pray at the Pump, we weren’t entirely surprised. Freaked out by the super-spike in oil prices, they have staged vigils at gas stations in St. Louis for road relief:

Participants say they plan to buy gas, pray and then sing “We Shall Overcome” with a new verse: “We’ll have lower gas prices.”

Lo and behold, the cost of a barrel of oil has, indeed, declined this week — with the unfortunate side-effect that others might take up this line of prayer. Prayer isn’t so much about  . . .

ADVANCE BOOK EXCERPT: VAISHALI

The following is taken from Vaishali’s second book, Wisdom Rising.

It was the great spiritual teacher J. Krishnamurti who once said, “If you think that meditation is sitting in a corner of your room for fifteen to twenty minutes, and then getting up and paying no attention to the rest of your day, you are NOT meditating. You are fooling yourself!”

What does he mean by this? Meditation is the process of watching the mind, paying attention to where it wanders, and then bringing it back to a place or point of focus. The point of focus can be watching the breath; it can be holding a mantra or a specifically-designed intention or thought.

GUEST COLUMN: Beverley Wood

All of the guys I’ve ever been in love with have always said the same thing. I have one eye on the door even if it’s just out of the corner of the eye — like I’m waiting for someone who I know is coming, someday.

It disturbs me when guys point that out while we’re still at the intense romance stage. I don’t notice it myself until much later.

I believe in fate. I don’t know what it holds in store for me, but I believe in it.

The trouble with the door thing is the timing. When a significant other accuses me of staking out the door, I’m usually perfectly content. Until they point out this trait, I forget that I do it. And then I start wondering who it is that I’m waiting for. If I knew, I could take my eyes off the damn door . . . and get down to business.

GUEST COLUMN: MORGAN STANEK

I wrote this after my first day of work at a homeless shelter in Hamilton, ON, a steel-plant city in Canada. It’s an overwhelming job that provides endless opportunities for me to learn about myself, and others.

Our society has a hierarchy, and its currency is called expertise and knowledge. Homeless people are at the bottom of the pyramid because we believe they display neither of those qualities. It’s nonsensical, from a spiritual perspective. These individuals have deeper experiences than many of us who have conformed. Why? Maybe they’ve peered so deeply into the abyss, that it opened them up, humbled them up — or totally transformed them. Here’s what they’ve taught me:

We’ve launched our Pain Body Index as a slideshow. The arresting images are drawn from sources like The Bridge, a documentary that chronicles the dirty little secret of that postcard-shot called the Golden Gate Bridge. The San Francisco tourist mecca also doubles as America’s No. 1 destination for suicide attempts.

The Soul’s Code Pain Body Index (PBI) is a loose riff on the Body Mass Index, known as BMI. Our Pain Body Index, while far less scientific, measures an individual’s unconscious hurt and anger — the stuff that resides in the psyche’s basement.

This is the second in a series, Finding happiness in all the right places, by a young female seeker

BEING THERE: EMMA — My decision-making mechanism wasn’t cooperating when I was weighing whether or not to go on this retreat. It was a constant back and forth — I need to buckle down and work, but I’m depressed and not productive, but I’ll feel better if I’m productive, but I can’t even get up before noon because I don’t care, but I need the money, but this trip will be good for me, but maybe I’m just escaping, but the retreat is me facing myself rather than just a distraction.

Eventually, I packed, even as I oscillated between worrying that I was running from my problems and loving the spontaneity of it all. I used to travel constantly — crazy and wild spontaneous trips — and living in Austin I had settled down with all its benefits and drawbacks. I even wrote a poem, senior year of college, called “My trips, my drugs”

Once a clueless novice, a writer shares how she learned to stop worrying — and was inspired to become certified as a Reiki master. If you have ever had children . . .

BY MARLENE SATTER — Anyone who’s ever sat in a doctor’s office and steamed, waiting sometimes for hours to be seen — only to be given the bum’s rush once inside the doctor’s office — ought to consider Reiki as a self-help technique for your mind-body toolkit.

Also, if you have ever had children or animals, and have ever felt helpless when they were ill or hurt, think of Reiki as something you can add to your home’s First Aid kit, while you wait for medical help (or simply lessen the side-effects of allopathic treatments). Sometimes you might find that Reiki is all that was needed!

In 2002, I discovered the power of Reiki first-hand (pun unavoidable

Canadian funny-men are also spiritual seekers: Jim Carrey looks to Eckhart Tolle, and Mike Myers takes his cues from Deepak Chopra. But Myers’ comedic homage to Chopra, The Love Guru, is no laughing matter

BY PAUL KAIHLA — Dana Carvey and Mike Myers were comedic partners. They made millions, and achieved international fame with the Wayne’s World movies in the 1990s.

Then they went their own ways, and Myers found a new partner — this time, spiritual.

Do you think Carvey just might have been taking an indirect shot at Myers with this impersonation of Deepak Chopra? It’s from Carvey’s new, hilarious HBO comedy special, Squatting Monkeys Tell No Lies:

Carvey: Deepak Chopra, I love that guy because he’s so confident about what the fuck we’re all doing on this planet . . .

Impersonation of Chopra: “If you want to have success, let go of success. If you want to have happiness, let go of happiness. If you want to be rich — Give *me* all your money.”

(See minute 6:45 of the the video below; Above photo, Mike Myers and Deepak Chopra)

GUEST COLUMN: VICKI WOODYARD

What can we do but keep on breathing in and out, modest and willing, and in our places? ~Mary Oliver

We all need breathing room. A place where we can go to be recharged. For me, that room is on the inside. It cannot be located on a GPS. It is inside of us that peace descends and no where else.

After my daughter’s cancer came back for the second time, she had to have it removed — once again from her right leg.