By Natalia Rose, New Earth Wellness: Vision Keeper
Have you ever noticed that the words typically used to describe curmudgeonly old codgers—such as calcified, stiff, inflexible—also happen to be the words that describe the intermediate stages of the death and decay cycle? On the trajectory to death and decay there are various stages of rigidity. In fact, we can actually reduce the whole death and decay cycle down to the one premonitory symptom that precedes all others: contraction.
Contraction comes from the Latin root contrahere, which means “shrink” or “shorten.” Notice that in contraction we also have the term contract, as in those agreements entered into, knowingly or not, that we at New Earth Nation are disbanding with. Contraction also breaks down into contraaction—suggesting “going against” (contra) our natural, desirable action. Contraction, as I am referring to it here, is a defensive reaction to some alien threat. It is a kind of recoiling. We recoil when something is offensive to us. For example, when the body is instinctually repelled by a substance, it is effectively saying, “No, that’s not life-generating or viable for me. I do not wish to be exposed to that.” We contract around negative emotions, acidic substances, and ideologies that offend our nature, to start. By becoming conscious of the contraction reaction in all aspects of our lives—emotional, physical, mental—we may root out that first stroke of the decay trajectory, and thereby root death and decay out of our lives to the greatest possible extent.
If we were conscious of the way contraction weakens our state of being and invites death and decay, the prevention and release of accumulated contraction would be our highest priority. Cultivating expansiveness—e.g., creativity, lightness, flexibility, freedom of thought and movement—would be our highest cultural value and measure of success.
As it is now, with the exception of only a few highly evolved beings whom we can look to as guides, humanity en mass is in a state of continuous unconscious contraction. Stress is the greatest agent of contraction, bombarding us—to borrow language from New Earth Project Founder Sacha Stone— via “the gods of time, money and fear.” Time, money, and fear are the unholy trinity that have kept the world ticking for as far back as our history books take us.
We humans basically start contracting from this trilateral bombardment from birth; babies and young children are especially receptive to their environments and are shaped by the frequencies in which they are bathed—primarily by the frequencies of their parents, most of whom operate in enslavement under the ten-ton bricks of time, money, and fear. Before most children can even taste the nectar of life abundant, they are fighting for their life submerged in the entropic cycle, well on their way to calcification and decay by way of chronic unconscious contraction.
A life lived under the dark cloud of the money-time-fear paradigm creates nonstop conditions of contraction on the human organism and energy field. Cell by cell, system by system, organ by organ, thought by thought, emotion by emotion, we freeze up and diminish our whole beings. Consider some of the symptoms and their connections with the etymology of contraction: the stomach gets “tied into knots,” the head “pounds,” joints “stiffen,” breath is “short” and “shallow,” the throat “closes,” the voice “stammers,” bones become “brittle,” muscles “tighten,” heart valves “constrict,” blood “clots,” feet “cramp.” Even the mind is “hardened.”
Central to the sovereignty movement is the work of disbanding with those contracts that have held us in bondage to the dictates of time, fear, and money. These contracts actually cause us to contract. To take the semantic connection a step further, these contracts have defined us as corporations (corp meaning “body”), undermining our individual and communal sovereignty as thinking, breathing, expansive, interconnected beings and reducing us to a single inanimate body subject to the rigid rules of commerce.
Everything we encounter in our world— from the foods we eat to the emotions we have to the energetic frequencies of our environments—has either a contracting or expanding effect on us. We must understand this phenomenon if we are to evolve from a state of unconscious contraction to conscious, expansive engagement with ourselves, with one another, and with the world at large.
Another useful analogy to contemplate on this journey from contraction to expansion is the transition from ice to vapor. What bridges the two elements? Water. We can learn a lot from studying water, by emulating its clarity and fluidity—and its ability to soften and reanimate all that it comes into contact with.
As we dissolve the social and cultural contracts (both written and unwritten) that have held us in bondage, we must also dissolve those things that cause our bodies, emotions, and spirits to contract. We must become aware of which substances, experiences, and thoughts cause the contraction of our cells, tissues, organs, and emotions—and which, by contrast, facilitate expansion.
For example, consider the difference between a patch of wild strawberries and a bottle of vinegar. No matter who or what you are, you are naturally drawn to the wild berries; you wish to inhale the fragrance and take in its flavor and energy. Even just looking at them makes you expand and want to flood yourself with their essence, which you instinctively know to be life-generating.
Open a bottle of vinegar, on the other hand, and what happens? You immediately recoil from the acidic assault on your senses, much as an innocent child would draw back from the smell of alcohol. Acidic substances are acquired tastes, and nothing acidic facilitates expansion. Contraction is the expression of distaste, the premonitory signal that something is threatening to life.
Before I go further, I would like to make a distinction between the kind of contraction that occurs with the healthy pulse of life. Pulsing life is the most desirable thing we could want; it tells of a system of subatomic power and molecular integrity. The in breath and the out breath, the diastolic and systolic beats of the heart, the taut vitality of healthy cells expressing in streamlined beauty, the conscious contractions that birth new life—these are all life-generating pulsations. When I refer to contraction here, I am referring to dysfunctional one-way, unconscious contraction—the reaction a living being has to something harmful.
Since we live in an interconnected universe, any relationship we have with others can make us contract or expand, and we likewise cause them to contract or expand. This means that at any given point, on the interpersonal level, we are affecting and being affected by the expansion and contraction of others; and on the microcosmic level, the relationship between our cells, tissues, and organs are triggering expansions and contractions that trigger the same throughout the whole body.
As long as any part of us is stuck in a state of contraction, we will never know our full potential. That contraction reaction is no small cage. Ever wonder why the great yogis dedicate themselves to fluidity of movement, breath, and consciousness? Because fluidity is the bridge that can take us from contraction to expansion. By identifying unconscious contraction as the ultimate harbinger of our deterioration and bringing it to consciousness, I believe we can reverse the symptoms of contraction (which of course go hand-in-glove with degenerative diseases) and restore ourselves in all fields of our being to unveil the true human state!
If the contraction reaction throughout the body prevents the organs, systems, and glands from resounding with their intended vibratory-frequency, imagine the untapped potential of all our functions! For instance, if there is a frequency at which the sacred chamber of the brain is designed to hum, what might we be missing out on? Telepathy, clairvoyance, clairaudience, or other elevated forms of vision and communication? Some individuals have discovered these powers and use them—are we to believe that they represent the exceptions of human design? Or is it entirely possible that it’s the rest of us who are stuck in a state of contraction, and thus blocked off from the full range of our functions?
Now let’s consider the dormant sacred glands in the sexual organs. My research and intuition tell me that the sexual organs suffer from extreme effects of contraction. So much contraction has been introduced to them by physical and spiritual tension that they do not resound with the powerful vibration they were designed to. The cervix, ovaries, and uterus should vibrate at a frequency that sings the song of feminine creative power. Instead, they are contracted and underfunctioning, and what most women experience even in an orgasm is a far cry from the expansive bliss of the natural cervical song.
Some women are exploring the differences between vaginal, clitoral, and cervical orgasms. This is a worthwhile starting point (provided the conditions are loving, harmonious, and conducive to expansion), but the goal is not merely to have periodic orgasms; rather, it is to unbind the whole organism—meaning the entire body, not just the sexual organs—so that the song of life can flow throughout. The natural song must be restored to each organ and system of the body for the whole to be restored. This is central to the law of interconnectivity and interdependence.
Naturally, the opposite of contraction is expansion—love, beauty, harmony, and vitality are all qualities of expansiveness. One thing we holistic-minded enthusiasts know well is that it is impossible to separate one plane from another. Nowhere is this better illustrated than in the impact of the feeling plane upon the physical plane.
The great-grandmother of health and spirituality, Louise Hay, wrote a book called, The Body Never Lies. The title is brilliant enough in and of itself. Other greats, specifically, Greg Braden and Lynne McTaggart, emphatically declare that the body is the subconscious mind—which is precisely Louise Hay’s premise. This is why, when the body speaks, we must pay close attention, never dismissing even a subtle pain as insignificant, for the body is always communicating with us.
But how does it communicate? Firstly, it communicates in the language of pleasure and pain. Pain indicates that we are off track and being exposed to something unfavorable. We get a headache, or we become weak, or we get sick or depressed. Pleasure—such as feelings of bliss, well-being, soaring energy, clear-headedness, and so on—all communicate to us that we are on the right track. Now, if we peel back another layer, we can see that even more than pain and pleasure, the body’s premonitory symptoms come in the form of expansion and contraction.
All symptoms of pain can be traced back by hours, days, weeks, and even months and years to unconscious contraction. Unconscious contraction is the premonitory symptom of pain. The problem is that most people don’t ever notice it because they are unaware of how contraction and expansion fit into the order of Natural Law. So long as we are operating under the dictates of money, time, and fear, we will remain in an extreme state of contraction. Sadly, this is the norm for most people, so it goes largely unnoticed in our culture. Contraction is the held tension in the body that leads to calcification and decay. That’s why most people today are devitalized and aging prematurely.
Until we become very conscious of the contraction reaction at every level of our being, and work consciously to reverse it, we will never discover our true potential as vast, unlimited beings. Even the most aware among us are still steeped in contraction. We must release the tension and ride waves of fluidity back to our flexible, free, expansive selves.
You might ask, what will that feel like? What I have found as I’ve undertaken this journey from contraction to expansion is that my body ceases to feel like just a body that is useful for transporting me through life; rather, it begins to feel like an instrument of harmonious sensation, in which every organ resonates with song. I feel a vibratory hum with surges of brilliance in mind and body, as if my whole being is aglow with the golden mean of original design. There is no other feeling like it—it is the feeling of true health and wellness. The body sings with blissful sensation, the mind flows with ideas and solutions, the heart brims with love for all life forms. That is why I would do anything to be able to sustain this feeling, to unlock its secrets and share them with the world!
So what are some practical ways you can move from the dark state of contraction into the bright song of expansion? It’s quite simple; you just have to be very clear with your intentions and stay focused. I recommend going through every category of your life, asking yourself many targeted questions, and answering them as honestly as you can. To get you started, here are a few examples of the kinds of questions you might ask:
“What substances/relationships/habits/ thought patterns are contracting my life experience and which of those are expanding it?”
“What are the things I can do to begin to dissolve the tensions and calcifications and restore lightness and flow to my life?”
“What foods and food combination enable my system to flow and breathe more deeply? Which substances nurture gentle but powerful growth, and which trigger violent triage?”
“What about my personal relationships? Does a particular person’s energy cause my heart to contract or expand? How is my energy affecting him or her, in turn?”
“Am I living a life I believe in or am I pretzeling around to fit into a life that cramps my spirit? If the latter, then why? Who am I trying to please?”
When we transition from contraction to expansion, we become fluid and unrestricted; we find we are able to move through life and life can move through us. We become more tolerant and more accepting of other people’s energies and ways of being, acting, speaking, etc. Because we are open and fluid, we can easily make room for differences without compromising our own values, just as a river can flow around the rocks that stand in its path.
However, firm boundaries are sometimes necessary to protect what is most sacred to life; sometimes even a river needs to be protected from the chemicals that would poison it. Fortunately, as we become “wise as serpents but harmless as doves”(Matthew 10-16) we can learn to protect our fluidity without contracting into hardness. We can erect boundaries without becoming boundaries.
Just as we can learn the body’s language of pleasure and pain and attune our ears to the sounds of harmony and dissonance, we can root out points of contraction in order to unlock the sweet song of expansion. This is just a jumping off point—yet another way to help us disband with the contracts of time, money, and fear and attain true sovereignty. For we at New Earth Wellness believe that wellness and sovereignty are two sides of the same coin.
So, until next time, I leave you in peace and love from the zero point of the expansive human heart.
