Meditation and Deep Time: Accessing Your Anchored Self

This is also true for how we deal with learning about the crimes against humanity and the negative’s agenda(s) for thousands of years.  Restorative justice will not even be possible if we approach the truths with dualist minds.  We will just continue operating with some level of retributive justice and this will keep us trapped right in our lower three chakras–both collectively and individually.  Do we want 4th density to come?  Are we in an advent of sorts, longing for the New Earth? Then we better get ready for the nitty gritty work of looking inside and seeing where we, as individuals, are mired in the muck.  Where is the way out?  While removing entity attachments, esoteric knowledge, knowing our astrological origins, rituals, etc, all can help, they are secondary to learning how to surrender to the now, in the silencing of the mind, and connecting with our Source in darkness and no-thingness of union with Infinity.  

In meditative practices there are two kinds of approaches: Apophatic (releasing of thoughts, images, and mind-processes) and Kataphatic (spiritual imagery, dialogs with guides, angelics, higher selves, astral travel, etc).  You don’t have to remember those fancy words but the trajectories of the approaches are important to consider.  Both the apophatic and kataphatic are need for a robust spiritual development.  They are the stuff of the higher chakras, higher inner planes, and higher densities.  

Yet, in all of the great spiritual traditions of the world, there has always been the wisdom that the apophatic way must be learned first and is primary. The apophatic way allows us to move through the levels of awareness while the kataphatic way is like getting out of the apophatic elevator and exploring a particular floor.  Have you ever known people who may be very gifted at energy work, astral travel, etc, but you are surprised at how dualistic their thinking still is?  I sure have.  This is why we as a collective need to learn how to adopt some form of contemplative practice.  And there are many kinds!!!  

Ra does not make any recommendation as to which to adopt, but they do invite us to adopt one that works for us, personally.  With your permission, I will express an approach that has worked for thousands of people, including myself.  The following is an exploration of what is known as Centering Prayer.  It is super easy and very demanding, at the same time.  But after exploring different meditative practices for years, I have found a home. 

In my admittedly subjective opinion, the practice of Centering Prayer is one of the greatest practices to help us learn how to be more fully awake and enjoy life in abundance. In this article, we will see how Centering Prayer can help us drop down into our True Self, what I call the Anchored Self, and from there, enjoy a more centered sense of being that can interface with reality enjoying higher levels of joy, thankfulness, effectiveness, and discernment.

What is the Anchored Self?

The Anchored Self is your True Self.  It is who you really are and have always been.  Finding our Anchored Self is not about achieving some high level of private morality but rather it is about awakening more and more to who you already are.  It feels like no-thing because it is not defined by external validations or wounds.  It is unwoundable because it is radically (radius=roots)

secure in the Infinite Creator’s own divine essence.

Some people have never had much more than a glimpse of their Anchored Selves as they continually seek ways to fill the voids through addictions and addictive thinking patterns. Most people do, indeed, experience their Anchored Self but do not live from there on a regular basis.  A small minority have found the Pearl of Great Price and operate in the world with a palatable wholeness and ontological security. These people live surrendered lives of thanksgiving. They are humble, gracious, and possess great equanimity.

The great goal and purpose in our lives is to learn how to more and more embody the Anchored Self and use the Floating Self to do good in the world.  There will be our dance between the two Selves but if we listen well to our great sufferings and our great loves, then we become real leaven for the collective good.  We become more fully to that which we already are: Logo’s Body on Earth.

 What is the Floating Self?

The Floating Self is our False Self.  It is not the bad self and we do not need to demonize it.  It is the self to which we are attached especially in terms of our image that we want to project for others to see.  I am smart, I am attractive, I am successful, I am liked, I am holy, or I am stupid, I am ugly, I am despised, I am unworthy–these are examples of the Floating Self’s jostling around in the winds of the emotions of the day.  The Floating Self is the egoic self and often takes offense or feels the need to defend itself.  It is inherently dualistic and strips everything down to binary choices, and then creates the illusion that we have to pick one of them.

Although I said that the Floating Self is not bad, I do want to state that it is dangerous if that is the only self we know.  We can achieve high success, have doctorates and be experts in areas, and still be living almost entirely from our Floating Selves.  Head knowledge is not nearly as valuable as gnosis, or lived knowing based on experience.

When St. Paul speaks about the need to die to the flesh, most of us have interpreted him to mean that body, and its needs, are evil, coarse, and something to avoid or see as shameful.  Instead, St. Paul was using his own word, “sarx,” for what we are calling the Floating Self.  That is what needs to die to its importance, its need for recognition, its need for instant gratification.  Learning how to die daily (sometimes, moment by moment) to the Floating Self’s neediness is how we “rise” in our Anchored Self, more and more.  You see, the great pattern of life–what was archetypally revealed in journey of Jesus in his dying and rising–is something that is always prevalent our own lives.  When you have the eyes to see this, you will see it everywhere and all the of the time in daily life.  That’s when faith really gets real, personal, corporate, and transformative. Ra speaks to this exact same archetype in two pithy statements:

• 94.26 “All things in manifestation may be seen in one way or another to be offering themselves in order that transformationsmay take place upon the level appropriate to the action.” [note: dying=offering, rising=transformations]
• 93.24 “Thus the crux ansata (crucifixion or ankh) is intended to be seen as an image of the eternal in and through manifestation and beyond manifestation through the sacrifice and transformation of that which is manifest.” [note: dying=sacrifice (to make holy through self-offering); rising=transformation of that which is manifest]

 Wholeness and Holiness

The Floating Self, believe it or not, actually becomes our greatest teacher in our lives.  As Psalm 51:3 admits, “My sin is ever before me.” When we live from our Floating Selves, we are living in a disconnected way apart from our ground of being. In this illusion of separation, which feels so real when we are caught up in its drama, we miss the mark (“hamartano”, Greek for “sin”) of staying in alignment with the Source of our Anchored Selves, the Infinite Creator.

However, when we can catch ourselves in the act of living out from our Floating Self, we mindfully witness what is going on, and then we can better handle the tension of the moment without needing to immediately judge and critique it.  By falling down into our Anchored Selves, we enter the field of wholeness–and the luminosity of wholeness naturally lends itself to clarifying a path of holiness. I’m not saying that Anchored Self people do not miss the mark from time to time, for to err is human. However, there won’t be much lag time before recognition of our hurtful or harmful actions or thought processes.  We catch ourselves in the middle of the act and then surrender. And that makes all of the difference.

What brings us down into our Anchored Selves is Great Love and Great Suffering.  These are two things that crack the Floating Self’s dualistic lens of viewing reality so that the light of possibilities and hope can shine through (as Leonard Cohen pinned, “There’s a crack in everything/ that’s how the light gets in.”) Great Love is defined as those moments of life that fill us with such awe, wonder, and fascination that we are perplexed into attraction for the source of such delights.  This opens us up.  Great Suffering can be specific crucifixions or less intense daily struggles. Either way, the telltale sign of suffering is when we feel powerless to change it.

Great Love and Great Suffering lead us to moments of what is known as jamais vu.You have often heard of deja vu, or the experience of having had this moment before. Jamais vu is just the opposite.  It is coming face to face with a totally new kind of life-experience that is unfamiliar to us.  These are those moments that we recall later in life as being foundational in affirming our life’s course, or changing it.  When we listen well to the jamias-vu-moments of our lives, then our Floating Selves  are pulled down, tamed, by our Anchored Selves, and then used to do good in the world.  You see, we don’t get rid of, kill, or eradicate our Floating Selves. We listen and learn its games and then compassionately reign it and use it to be our “canary in the cave,” signaling us on how we can intentionally engage with our environs grounded in compassion and wisdom. This is one of the greatest ways that we can allow the Logos, through our Anchored Selves, flowing into our Floating Selves, to bring living water to a thirsty world. That’s wholeness… and that’s holiness.

Chronos and Kairos: Encountering Deep Time

Another angle of understanding our Floating Selves and Anchored Selves is to relate how they experience the phenomenon of time. Our Floating Selves correspond more to chronos, chronological time.  It is in tune with the linear passage of time but note well that the Floating Self is never conscious of the present moment.  Its attention is trained towards the glorious and/or horrible past, or fantasizes about and/or dreads the future. The Floating Self is that self which feels anxiety and angst and the more we feel pressed, hemmed in, by the chaotic energy of these things, the more we are ensconced into our Floating Selves.

In contrast, our Anchored Self experiences the eternal present moment and pays attention to kairos.  Kairos is deep time, or those moments of jaimas vu.  From the spaciousness and clarity of Anchored Self embodying, we are able to see how everything in its own way belongs and we live lives of gratitude–even when we pass through difficult life-situations. We can do this because we have come to trust that after everyt death, there is always more abundant life.