The Easter message we share today was given to me nearly three decades ago but remains true.
That sharing took place many years ago at an Easter sunrise service… in Naples, Florida at Unity Church.
Jake Kern the Unity minister, after building and being head of Unity in Naples for decades, was retiring. This was to be his last sermon and in the tradition there the service was outside… in a pine woods… around a bonfire. Taking in the morning chill… the rising moist and bird song… we waited.
Then Jack began… a message to me about renewal of life and a major shift of rejuvenation at age 50. I still remember it well 25 years later.
Jack began by sharing a Bible verse Leviticus 25:9-12 which says:
“You shall have the trumpet sounded throughout all your land. And you shall hallow the fiftieth year and you shall proclaim liberty throughout the land to all its inhabitants. It shall be a jubilee for you: you shall return, every one of you, to your property and every one of you to your family. That fiftieth year shall be a jubilee for you: you shall not sow, or reap the aftergrowth, or harvest the unpruned vines. For it is a jubilee; it shall be holy to you: you shall eat only what the field itself produces.”
A year of jublilee… at age 50. What a nice thought… a powerful thought of renewal and growth at any age.
This thought helped me understand the important of keeping one’s activities… one’s business and lifestyle in balance with the rhythms of nature.
The importance of seven is pretty clear… Sabbath is the seventh day. We have all heard of taking a sabbatical. This is the time when we leave the old cycle and rest before shifting gears and beginning anew. We have all heard of the seven year itch. Is this the body saying, “Hey Bud, time to shift”.
The Vedic and Andean philosophy is that at about this time (age 50) we should begin to reduce the material aspect of our life and become more spiritual.
Life sciences from India and the Andes suggest that the first 50 years of life should take care of the material and the second 50, the spiritual.
Here is what Jack’s Easter message meant to me. There is a time and place for everything. Our being has been created with a incredible gift… a great inner wisdom that helps us to to take different steps… accomplish different goals at different times in our life.
If we recognize and take advantage of this inherent intelligence within and use it in our entire life….including business… investing and lives, we’ll do better and find life more fulfilling.
Our thoughts are one of the most important factors in success… or failure. The frequencies around us shape our thoughts and our chemistry. They can make a difference leading us to action that can cause good or bad health. Thoughts can make the difference between the rich and the poor, the happy and the sad, the healthy and the sick.
However, few of us ever think about how we process information to create thoughts. Nor have many of us considered that we process information in different ways via different parts of our bodies at different times in our lives.
A shaman in Ecuador revealed a theory about this when my wife Merri and I were invited to age 14 “cutting of the hair” ceremony at a sacred site in Ecuador.
The pre-Incan pyramid of Pucara de Rumicucho is very near the equator and looms like broken emerald teeth biting into the powder blue sky. Merri, and I were surrounded by barren mountain peaks to the north, and ribbons of modern condos which created contrasts to the south.
Pucara de Rumicucho
We stood on this pre-Hispanic fortress built before recorded time that was now encroached by civilization from Quito’s crowds. The present was colliding with the past. Yet the pyramids remain strong. In fact this monument’s Quichua name, Pucara de Rumicucho, means “Stone Fortress.”
Built high in the Andes at 10,498 feet, this ruin is Ecuador’s most significant Pre-Colombian and Pre-Incan site perfectly aligned with the white-capped summit of the volcano, Cayambe.
What ancient ceremonies took place here are unknown, but the sacredness of Rumicucho stitches mysteries from centuries past with today. Rumicucho remains a sacred site for meeting the spirits on the longest day of the year.
Merri, and I were at a ceremony on the summer solstice. Solstices in Ecuador do not make the days grow longer. We were at the center of the earth, just minutes from the equator where every day and night meet on equal grounds.
We had been invited to attend the first “cutting of the hair” ceremony performed in public since the centuries long colonial law prohibiting shamanic ceremonies had been repealed.
Then in 2008 the nation created a new constitution that returned the indigenous rights to perform their ceremonies anytime again. The in that year for the first time in centuries a taita yatchak was going to conduct a “Cutting of the Hair” ceremony during the day.
My wife Merri and I felt honored to be among the few non indigenous invited.
Events created by a 30-year writing and publishing career had led us to Ecuador and a life lived for several years with a Taita Yatchak shaman and his apprentices at a remote Andean hacienda. The yatchak was performing this “coming of manhood” ceremony for a 14 year-old boy who was to move to the hacienda and begin a lifelong pursuit of shamanism as an apprentice to the yatchak.
Later that evening, back at the hacienda, we joined the yatchak and apprentices with the young man. The yatchak explained the rules of eating during this sacred period. He said “No meat. No cheese.”
“No cheese?” the boy replied almost shouting with shock.
The yatchak calmly replied, “You are here only as long as you choose. I will tell you what I believe to be true. You choose what to accept as truth for you and not.”
Later at a lesson for the apprentices I recall the yatchak had a number of religious books laying on the dining table; the Bible, Teachings of St. Germain, Qur’an, Torah and others. “All these books belong on the table together,” he said. “Those who say different: Big words. Small mind.”
The theory below is presented in the spirit of these two thoughts. Some of the information garnered will be useful to you, at least some of the time, but not all of it might apply to you. Feel free to pick and choose that which makes sense for you, where you are at this time, in the current circumstances of your life.
If correct, the idea is momentous. It’s just a theory but a lot of science supports the supposition and it’s pieced together from many sources.
These bits and pieces of information have pieces of a puzzle that seems to fit.
So here goes…it’s theory…so keep this in mind.
Seven year cycles seem to have great importance in the way we process information.
Jewish people (Bar Mitzvah) and Andeans (First Cutting of the Hair) celebrate around 12 to 14 years for the coming of manhood. One of the first pieces of the puzzle appeared when Merri and I were invited to one of these age 14 ceremonies at a sacred site in Ecuador.
The theory is that we shift our major energy processing to a new chakra at about each seven years.
Chakras? What are these? For the purposes of this theory they are energy processing centers in our body. Each chakra is connected to the spinal chord which in turn passes the energy to one of our organs and glands.
There appear to be seven main chakras each processing data for one of the major organs or glands.
The theory is that every seven years one of these chakras acts as the main energy processing center.
Each seven year period has a purpose.
The first seven years is aimed at bonding us with our mother. No other relationship is as important during this time.
At around age seven, we shift chakras to another that is aimed at bonding us with our peers of same gender. Take a batch of ten year old boys and girls to a dance and watch them each rush to opposite ends of the room. Girls are sugar, spice and everything nice. Boys…spiders, snails and puppy dog tails.
Then at 14 we shift again. Age 14-21 bonds us with peers of opposite gender. Take the same boys and girls to a dance when they are 16 and watch out. You’ll need chaperones!
Age 21 to 28 is aimed at bonding us with our mate. Even the West recognizes 21.
I have not seen many clues as to what the next cycles are meant to do. Maybe you can help? Each seven years what we were doing, if done in harmony with what our body should be doing grows pale. The way we think changes.
Imagine this. If a five year old sees a glass of milk, his or her thought is, “Let’s have a drink with mommy”.
A ten year old is more likely to think “Let’s get together with my gang (girls for girls and guys for guys) and have a party”.
The sixteen year old thinks, “Let’s have a glass of milk with my date”!
This theory can have profound consequences. Imagine every seven years we need to make some monumental shifts in how we think and what we do.
We have all heard of taking a sabbatical. This is the time when we leave the old cycle and rest before shifting gears and beginning anew.
We have all heard of the seven year itch. Is this the body saying, “Hey, Bud, time to shift”.
What does appear in many religions and philosophies is a major shift at age 50.
The Bible has such a clue about this in Leviticus 25:9-12 when it says.
“You shall have the trumpet sounded throughout all your land. And you shall hallow the fiftieth year and you shall proclaim liberty throughout the land to all its inhabitants. It shall be a jubilee for you: you shall return, everyone of you, to your property and everyone of you to your family. That fiftieth year shall be a jubilee for you: you shall not sow, or reap the aftergrowth, or harvest the unpruned vines. For it is a jubilee; it shall be holy to you: you shall eat only what the field itself produces.”
The Vedic and Andean philosophy is that at about this time we should leave the material aspect of our life and become more spiritual.
Life sciences from India and the Andes suggest that the first 50 years of life should take care of the material and the second 50, the spiritual.
Vedic Astrology ties in with this as well except I was confused for years because the numbers did not quite work. Vedic Astrology normally shows our life potential to be about 120years. Seven cycles of seven years gets us to age 98. “What happened to the extra 20 years” I kept asking?
A big piece of this puzzle was answered when I learned that Andean shamanic beliefs hold that there are nine chakras, (the 8th connects to the soul, the 9th the infinite being).
Learning this resolved the huge mathematical question that haunted this line of questioning. With nine chakras, the two cycles gets us to age 119 which would leave us to shift into the infinite being at age 120. This pretty well matches the concept in astrology which suggests we should live to be 120.
This also ties into the Vedic idea that there are seven levels of spiritual enlightenment. Our first seven cycles takes care of our material life. The second seven cycles moves us towards deeper spirituality.
We go through the process of growing up, procreating, caring for our family and then in the second series of seven go through a similar process in a spiritual journey.
I do not think that this means we should necessarily stop working at 50. Work… service is one of the eight paths to enlightenment.
However at 50 we may feel a natural urge to beginning preparing to change our goals. Merri and I certainly felt this and work now more for the fulfillment and whatever positive good we can create rather than the money.
Then at 64… we really can begin again… living a full life at a more spiritual level. We can work where “action is our goal… reward truly not our concern”… we work out our relationship with reality in order rather than our bank account.
This theory could have some profound implications because it suggests that every seven years the way we think, our information processing system and even our thoughts change.
So if you have seven year itches, acting on the desires you feel will help you remain in tune with nature. Our bodies are quite miraculous and few events that take place are by accident. The way we age, the way our thoughts change may do so because that is the way our lives are meant to unfold.
So there you have it, some thoughts about thought, perhaps the greatest health asset we have.
These seven-year cycles is taught in the Waldorf Education system and there are several lectures by Rudolf Steiner on this.
One of the Waldorf websites says: The concept of distinct seven-year cycles is central to Waldorf education. Each cycle carries its own focus and primary emphasis through which one learns. After one has concluded studies through the content of the Waldorf educational curriculum, one may continue to study Steiner’s indications for adult development, also unfolding in seven-year cycles, for the course of one’s life.
Birth to Age 7
– the growth of the physical body
- the process of imitation
- the virtue of goodness
- learning primarily through the hands
- rooted in the physical (or willing) realm
Ages 7 to 14
– the strengthening of ones life forces
- the process of imagination
- the virtue of beauty
- learning primarily through the heart
- rooted in the etheric (or feeling) realm
Ages 14 to 21
– the development of cognitive skills
- the process of inspiration
- the virtue of truth
- learning primarily through the head
rooted in the astral (or thinking) realm
Waldorf education is also recognized for its distinct approach to the curriculum, with an emphasis on the oral tradition, decreased use of electronic media, and an emphasis on festivals. Read more about some of these unique aspects of Waldorf education as well as the main lesson, practical arts, eurhythmy and spatial dynamics.
Age 21 and Up
– continuing personal development and transformation
- the assertion of ones will through moral responsibility
- the process of intuition
- the virtue of wisdom
- learning takes place in a cumulative, integrated nature (higher Ego)
For further reading on biographical cycles, we recommend the following books:
-The Veiled Pulse of Time (William Bryant)
– Phases: The Spiritual Rhythms of Adult Life (Bernard Lievgoed)
– The Human Life (George O’Neil and Gisela O’Neil)
Age 21 and Up
– continuing personal development and transformation
- the assertion of ones will through moral responsibility
- the process of intuition
- the virtue of wisdom
- learning takes place in a cumulative, integrated nature (higher Ego)
This is just one more dot connected in our never ending education about cycles, natural rhythms and their importance in learning adapting and gaining and keeping good health, that ancient wisdoms can teach us especially in eras of great shifts.
