Anatomy of the Spirit: The Seven Stages of Power and Healing

What drains your spirit drains your body. What fuels your spirit fuels your body.

Poem from Rev. Jim Cotter, as listed on the opening pages of “Anatomy of the Spirit” by Caroline Myss:~ God be in my head and in my understanding. God be in my eyes and in my looking. God be in my mouth and in my speaking. God be in my tongue and in my tasting. God be in my lips and in my greeting.~ God be in my nose and in my smelling/inhaling. God be in my ears and in my hearing. God be in my neck and in my humbling. God be in my shoulders and in my bearing. God be in my back and in my standing. ~ God be in my arms and in my reaching/receiving. God be in my hands and in my working. God be in my legs and in my walking. God be in my feet and in my grounding. God be in my knees and in my relating.~ God be in my gut and in my feeling. God be in my bowels and in my forgiving. God be in my loins and in my swiving. God be in my lungs and in my breathing. God be in my heart and in my loving.~ God be in my skin and in my touching. God be in my flesh and in my paining/pining. God be in my blood and in my living. God be in my bones and in my dying. God be at my end and at my reviving.

We are not designed to be critical of others or ourselves; we think ill of others only out of fear.

Learn to trust what you cannot see far more than what you can see.

How can you live without knowing what your spirit is doing and what your spirit is saying to you?

Let me know what I am able and trust that behind all events no matter how painful there is a reason from which truth can come.

your biography—that is, the experiences that make up your life—becomes your biology.

Love is the fuel of our physical and spiritual bodies.

Our lives are structured around power symbols: money, authority, title, beauty, security.

consistent: live what you believe.

The wounded child sees the Divine as operating a reward and punishment system, with humanly logical explanations for all painful experiences. The wounded child does not understand that within all experiences, no matter how painful, lie spiritual insights. So long as we think like a wounded child, we will love conditionally and with great fear of loss.

Meeting the “self” activates the transformation of human consciousness,

Again, we all have negative feelings, but not all negativity produces disease. To create disease, negative emotions have to be dominant, and what accelerates the process is knowing the negative thought to be toxic but giving it permission to thrive in your consciousness anyway. For instance, you may know you need to forgive someone, yet you decide that remaining angry gives you more power. Remaining obsessively angry makes you more likely to develop a disease because the energy consequence of a negative obsession is powerlessness. Energy is power, and transmitting energy into the past by dwelling on painful events drains power from your present-day body and can lead to illness.

Grace is the breath of God—an invisible essence beyond intellect that moves swiftly amongst us. It is not only possible to become a living conduit of this powerful force, grace is immediately accessible to us along with the courage to follow divine guidance.

yourself at all times as an energy being as well as a physical one. The energy part of yourself is the transmitter and recorder of all your thoughts and interactions. Keep in mind at all times that your biography becomes your biology. Develop the habit of evaluating the people, experiences, and information you allow into your life. Developing symbolic sight begins with intention: consciously and regularly evaluate your interactions and their influence on your emotional and physical power. And

Questions for Self-Examination 1.  How do you define creativity? Do you consider yourself a creative person? Do you follow through on your creative ideas? 2.  How often do you direct your creative energies into negative paths of expression? Do you exaggerate or embellish “facts” to support your point of view? 3.  Are you comfortable with your sexuality? If not, are you able to work toward healing your sexual imbalances? Do you use people for sexual pleasure, or have you felt used? Are you strong enough to honor your sexual boundaries? 4.  Do you keep your word? What is your personal code of honor? of ethics? Do you negotiate your ethics depending upon your circumstances? 5.  Do you have an impression of God as a force that exerts justice in your life? 6.  Are you a controlling person? Do you engage in power plays in your relationships? Are you able to see yourself clearly in circumstances related to power and money? 7.  Does money have authority over you? Do you make compromises that violate your inner self for the sake of financial security? 8. How often do survival fears dictate your choices? 9.  Are you strong enough to master your fears concerning finances and physical survival, or do they control you and your attitudes? 10.  What goals do you have for yourself that you have yet to pursue? What stands in the way of your acting upon those goals?

Let go of how you thought your life should be, and embrace the life that is trying to work its way into your consciousness.

Your biography becomes your biology”—if

Remaining obsessively angry makes you more likely to develop a disease because the energy consequence of a negative obsession is powerlessness.

She was thoroughly entrenched in her wounds, so much so that she had converted her wounds into a type of social currency

We do indeed weave our spirit to the events and relationships of our lives. Life is as simple as that.

Always, a shift in awareness includes a period of isolation and loneliness as one gets accustomed to the new level of truth. And then always, new companions are found. No one is left alone for long.

self-knowledge promotes choice and action, and many people feel unready for either.

The process of curing is passive; that is, the patient is inclined to give his or her authority over to the physician and prescribed treatment instead of actively challenging the illness and reclaiming health. Healing, on the other hand, is an active and internal process that includes investigating one’s attitudes, memories, and beliefs with the desire to release all negative patterns that prevent one’s full emotional and spiritual recovery.

In energy terms, depression literally is a release of energy—or life-force, if you will—without consciousness. If energy is like money, depression is like opening your wallet and announcing, “I don’t care who takes my money or how it is spent.

We remain terrified that by acknowledging Divine will—by surrendering our will to a greater will—we will become separated from all that brings us physical comfort.

Spiritual maturation includes not only developing the ability to interpret the deeper messages of sacred texts, but learning to read the spiritual language of the body. As we become more conscious and recognize the impact of our thoughts and attitudes—our internal life—upon our physical bodies and external lives, we no longer need to conceive of an external parent-God that creates for us and on whom we are fully dependent. As spiritual adults we accept responsibility for co-creating our lives and our health. Co-creation is in fact the essence of spiritual adulthood: it is the exercise of choice and the acceptance of our responsibility for those choices.

remind yourself continually of the higher truth that you cannot possibly see all the facts or details of any situation, nor visualize the long-term consequences of your actions.

Gaining an awareness of our own limitations opens us to considering choices we would not otherwise have made.

The chakra system is an archetypal depiction of individual maturation through seven distinct stages. The chakras are vertically aligned, running from the base of the spine to the crown of the head, suggesting that we ascend toward the Divine by gradually mastering the seductive pull of the physical world. At each stage we gain a more refined understanding of personal and spiritual power, since each chakra represents a spiritual life-lesson or challenge common to all human beings.