cartography of consciousness

The Cartography of Consciousness

December 15, 2022

Continuing with our reflections on death, today I want to move into more of an architectural deep dive about how I view the soul’s journey and evolution. 

First, I’ll start by saying that death and birth are two sides of the same coin, with death being the opening of a new beginning. It’s the transition to a new experience of our soul’s evolution.

The soul chooses to embody, or incarnate, in a time, environment, body, and mind that will best serve its own evolution, growth, and self-mastery. You are not here as the result of some cosmic accident. Our lives are not just insignificant blips on the radar. There is meaning and purpose to every step in this process that extends well beyond this particular life.

If we see the continuity between every birth and death along a soul’s path, we can see our lives as beads on an eternal golden thread. We have this life, this experience of embodiment with a localized node of consciousness seemingly separated from others by means of our skin, and then, upon death, we transition to a non-localized, non-physical consciousness outside of a body. 

We return to our soul clusters.

We return to our spirit guides.

We return to a process of consolidating everything we learned, followed by a period of rest.Then we come to a place of renewal and choose embarkation, because our journey of Soul Evolution is not over.

One of my teachers in regression hypnotherapy is a guy named Dr. Michael Newton. He wrote an amazing book called The Journey of Souls, in which he recounts 30+ years of regression-oriented hypnotherapy. In his clinical practice, as detailed in his book, people are able to describe their experience of transitioning between lives, what their souls go through via the death portal. They report that they experience a reconnection to their soul tribe, followed by a reflection on their soul’s mission and a reconsolidation of their soul’s evolution as it relates to that most recent life, culminating in the planning for the next life, all with the aid of a spiritual guide or mentor. It’s like the beginning of another chapter in the soul’s incredible book, or an expansion of the soul’s map of itself. 

This process of planning for the next life prepares the soul to embody again, after some rest and reflection. I like to call this type of architectural process the cartography of consciousness, where we look at the soul’s blueprint, including:

  1. Karma: what we’re bringing along from previous lifetimes and life experiences that have yet to find completion. You could say this is what’s coming in from the past.
  2. Persona: the soul’s unique character that’s expressed through a body and mind. Think of triplets who are born into the same household, yet have three distinctly different personalities and characters. The persona is the soul’s unique character that’s more present-oriented, expressing in the here and now.
  3. Dharma (soul mission): the future of our soul’s trajectory related to our soul’s unique gift that we’ve come to offer to the collective. We come in with a particular aspect to share with the collective that is related specifically to our soul because there’s never been another one of us. We have come to offer something unique to the collective, something that only we can offer.

If we look at this three-phase expression of a soul’s blueprint, we can appreciate that death is not the end, but the culmination of one chapter and the beginning of a new one. It is a portal to the in-between stage that allows the larger story of our soul to be expressed. 

Many of my teachers and mentors on the medicine path carry on with this kind of philosophy, and this kind of orientation to the cartography of consciousness is very much alive in me right now. By reflecting on this cartography of consciousness, we may come to realize that we’re not really creating anything new. We’re simply remembering what’s been taught before by orienting ourselves to wisdom traditions that have been propagated over time. 

I feel that the willingness to cultivate a relationship with death by acknowledging it as a necessary part of the soul’s process is a major step toward building a more compassionate world and rediscovering what makes us feel most alive. This is becoming so important now, as we have the opportunity to step into a new relationship with death–individually and as a culture–so we can thrive in life more freely, abundantly, and sustainably. 

May our process of becoming more intimate with death be founded in the faith that our lives are precious and that we each matter to the Whole in ways we cannot fully understand.  Life is sacred beyond measure, and on the cosmic scale, it all goes by in the blink of an eye.  

 

To your health, 

Dr. Dan

 

Get healthy. Stay present. Help out. 

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