As it happens currently there are a great many people navigating their Fifth internal monads, a life passage that occurs right around age fifty-six. For some people it can come a little earlier or a little later but there is no skipping it. This monad or intense initiation period is the fifth of seven that occur naturally to everyone during the course of their lives. Understandably to complete all seven monads you must have a full life so if you die as a child or young person you will not complete all seven. Completing all seven monads allows you to move from one level of a stage to the next like for example moving from seventh level mature to first level old. If you do not complete the seven then you will automatically return until you do complete all seven. As you can see, you eventually complete all seven monads numerous times through the course of your lifetimes until you become quite masterful at them. With that said sometimes an older soul will elect to have a difficult birth in order to set the life up for some more challenging lessons. Most old souls, because of their experience, learn to navigate the monads rather well and many younger souls have difficulty with them because of their lack of experience.
Briefly the seven are 1. Birth 2. Learning to walk and talk in order to become independent and leave helplessness behind 3. Puberty 4. Becoming an adult spiritually speaking at approximately age thirty-five 5. A life review or inventory at approximately age fifty six (this is also referred to by astrologers as the second Saturn return) 6. Knowing what you are going to die from and preparing yourself for exiting 7. Death, leaving the body behind. Except for the first and the last two monads, the rest require a transition of a number of months or even a year or more. Obviously learning to walk and talk takes time and so does puberty and so on.
Difficulty navigating a monad sets up challenges for the following monads. A difficult birth may make learning to walk and talk more difficult and then puberty may be more challenging as well. By the same token, if you do not navigate the fifth internal monad well, the 6th and 7th ones may be very challenging.
The fifth internal monad takes the longest at about a year and a half. During this period you take an inventory of your life. You review all your lessons, experiences, choices, the major traumas, the failures and successes, your primary relationships, the patterns of behavior, your fears and so on. You look to see what you have accomplished so far, what lessons you have learned and what lessons you have yet to learn or ones that are incomplete. You examine the agreements you have made, perhaps to raise children, to support certain people, to partner with others and you look to see which agreements you have not yet fulfilled that await you. You look at your main karmic debts, the ones that have been successfully paid and the ones that await you. For some people this inventory is a big relief as they realize how much they have done, and for others this inventory is a wake up call, a reminder that they have been avoiding what they said they were going to do and that it is time to get going. This whole process can seem overwhelming, confusing, and challenging. For younger souls who are not so aware, it all happens beneath their ordinary consciousness. For older souls it can be quite conscious. Almost nobody can be said to love the process. It is rather like puberty, necessary but glad not to repeat it again.
In business, inventories are also dreaded because they require shutting down and doing a lot of work. The owner must dump old products lines that no longer sell well and order new products that hold promise. All the nooks and crannies on all the shelves must be examined and catalogued for whatever tools or products they may hold. All the finances have to be gone through, the debts, the profits, the taxes, everything. As a result the business gets a fresh start and has the possibility of becoming much more successful. However, most people feel it is good to have the inventory in the rear view mirror.
Remote Healing
Each month, around the new and full moons, Jose, Lena or Anna leads a remote shamanic healing session. These approximately 30 minute sessions are designed to be experienced in a quiet, safe place free from distraction. Even if you cannot join live they can be very powerful, and always include a good clearing and beautiful icaros. Recording access is included for a short time afterwards. See the product description for dates and times.
All the monads involve a temporary unraveling of identity. They are all stressful, can be confusing in certain ways, involve questioning, and lead to potentially huge changes. The temporary unraveling of identity is a bit like a snake or lizard shedding their skin in order to grow larger. Typically they are rather grumpy during the process and it is best not to try to pick them up while they are molting. The same can be said for a human being energetically and psychologically molting. It is best to give them some space and have compassion for their temporary discomfort. You can’t fix it for them or do the work for them. A little counseling can be very useful especially during the fifth monad. Certainly people need support and often need a listener just to process what is going on.
The more you know about the monads the better, especially the fifth one that I am focusing on here. This can be a heads up for your own approaching initiation, and that is exactly what it is, an initiation. As mentioned already the nature of the 5th internal monad is that it unravels your identity for a little while and that is disconcerting for almost everybody. Basically you don’t exactly know who you are anymore and you are questioning everything about your life, where you live, where you work, who you are with, what has been completed and what is ahead. It is a time of uncertainty where your traditional grounding may be disrupted as you confront all the unfinished business of your life.
Most people are totally unprepared for this process because they think the mid life crises is during their forties and they have been led to believe that during their fifties they are home free. Sorry to break the news that this is totally not true. Education does not prepare you, therapists don’t prepare you, books don’t prepare you because this culture knows very little about real spiritual matters and the internal processes that govern life.
The internal monads are the same for people of every race, culture, gender or part of the world they live in. In short they are universal and they happen whether you like it or not. Since many people are not in the know, they do much of the processing internally and often suffer in silence perhaps even thinking they are going crazy or having a break down. They may do a great deal of the work in their dream life or subconsciously because they are so uncomfortable with the thoughts they are having. “Maybe I don’t want to be in this relationship anymore.” “What if I quit my job and moved to Spain. I feel done with the Midwest and I have always wanted to live in the Rocky Mountains. I don’t want to go to church anymore, ever. I’ve just got to leave this corporate job and open my own B&B.” These kind of thoughts can be pleasant musings but during the fifth monad they become urgent, real, and compelling and that is what scares people. So they try to suppress the thoughts but they won’t go away. Maybe they take pain medications or get stoned a lot to avoid making any decisions but this does not help. In the end the more courageous people make some big moves and if they do they will be well rewarded. If they do not they are facing a life of increasing depression and desperation. These are the people that shoot themselves in the head in their late fifties and early sixties and there are a lot of them. They simply return to face the same music all over again. Why delay things like this and prolong the suffering?
Now all this is challenging enough for most people but when the fifth monad happens concurrently with the massive influences of Uranus, Pluto, Neptune, and Mars that are currently active during these challenging times then the whole process is squared or cubed. Uranus tears away the little predictability you may have and creates an atmosphere of sudden changes that disrupt all tradition, all structure, all organization. And of course with the influence of Pluto this is done in an exceptionally powerful way. Neptune dissolves everything and makes all plans or ideas seem illusive while Mars adds a level of intense aggression to the environment. If this is your experience then don’t blame yourself for your perceived limited skills in navigating or the loss of your self assured self. You are definitely not alone. All you have to do is look at the current state of the nation, the world, the political situation, and many other world events to see that this is so.
Whether you are going through your fifth monad or not, here are some helpful guidelines to navigate these rough and tumble times. The first one is, never accept appearances no matter how life is showing up. Its all an illusion anyway and can completely change in the blink of an eye. Next, remember when the going gets tough, simplify, don’t complicate. Go back to the basics. Go hang out outside in the sun and accumulate energy and power. Drink plenty of fresh water. Pray and ask your poderios (power animals) and ayudantes (guides) for help everyday. Practice the inner smile and do some simple chi gong processes regularly like saying hello to the flowers, taking a star bath or even a forest bath, and place your palms over your eyes for a minute. Tap your third eye and the hemispheres of your skull. Focus on the stream of powerful energy that flows upward to your heart and then to your third eye. Clear yourself with natural tobacco and sage often. Quiet your mind as best you can. Remember the powerful words of the Korean Zen Master Seung Sanime: “Too many thinking, put it all down, only go straight, keep don’t know mind.” You won’t be able to figure things out mentally so go back to your heart and be there whenever possible. Bless the forest, the animals, and the people. Say to negative thoughts, “You have no power over me.” Watch yourself observing your breathing or observe the you that is judging, evaluating, comparing, and analyzing everything. Those are the basics. These small actions will definitely take you where you want to go if you do a little every day.
So many people have told me what a hard time they are having these days. Remember to have fun. Here are more tips for little actions you can take: Drink some bad beer with your cronies. Take a walk. Give a good tip to a waiter that deserves it. See everyone as Spirit. See yourself as a reflection of the Creator, the Great Spirit. When you make an error or do something you are not proud of do not waste one tiny second feeling bad about it. Just pick yourself up and do your best. Pretend you are Santa and you can grant an infinite number of gifts to anyone you encounter. In your mind gift the child with a good life, the old woman with vitality, an ill person with good health, an angry person with compassion and peace, a sad person with hope and inspiration, a suffering person with merciful help from the helper spirits always on hand and waiting for an instruction. Every great saint failed thousands of times before they woke up and when they woke up they had a good uproarious chuckle no matter what seemed to be happening in the virtual reality game that is the world.
Remember that no matter how hopeless the world or your life seems it is only a mirage, a mistaken perception of the false personality meant to entrap you in more suffering. You are on a long journey and the obstacles are meant to challenge you, to seem real so that you believe they could take you down. That is what makes it a good movie. You have a purpose, your life has meaning no matter what, there is always a way forward. You have either what you think of as the curse of free will or the great blessing of free will. The difference between those two perceptions is like turning your body from left to right or right to left. The view is entirely different. Take responsibility for your perceptions. If your life seems irredeemable and hopeless it is because you have made earlier choices that led you to this hypnotic hallucination. Shake yourself and wake up from the bad dream. That small act repeated thousands or times will be your redemption because every time you do it you rise up the shaft of the cave you have fallen into and you attract more light and receive the help of hundreds of hands reaching down to pull you up into the light of day. This light is the only real thing there is. The rest is a dream.
Many, many blessings, to you. Jose
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José Stevens
José Luis Stevens, PhD is the president and co-founder (with wife Lena) of Power Path Seminars, an international school and consulting firm dedicated to the study and application of shamanism and indigenous wisdom to business and everyday life. José completed a ten-year apprenticeship with a Huichol (Wixarika) Maracame (Huichol shaman) in the Sierras of Central Mexico. In addition, he is studying with Shipibo shamans in the Peruvian Amazon and with Paqos (shamans) in the Andes in Peru. In 1983 he completed his doctoral dissertation at the California Institute of Integral Studies focusing on the interface between shamanism and western psychological counseling. Since then, he has studied cross-cultural shamanism around the world to distill the core elements of shamanic healing and practice. He is the author of twenty books and numerous articles including Encounters With Power, Awaken The Inner Shaman, The Power Path, Secrets of Shamanism, Transforming Your Dragons and How To Pray The Shaman’s Way.
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