sábado, 14 de dezembro de 2019

1- PROLOGUE

THIS JOB HELPS TO FIND AGAIN THE OWN REAL BEEING ALONG A PILGRINATION WAY, UN-VEILING THE FALSE SENSES OF LIFE WHICH ARE HIDING OUR  AUTHENTICITY. 

On his 70 years old, Manuel Castelin delivers with love to young people, in the languages ​​he used around the world, Portuguese, Galician, Spanish and English, the
essential summary of his artist's journey through the Labyrinth of Life, as grateful retribution for what they gave him. their neighboring communities, their brother countries and their dear peoples.

Manuel wishes each of the companions along the way a great growth in harmony, a clear and free orientation, an intense and conscious discovery, wise choices, coherence and happy fruitfulness. 

This job is dedicated to my portuguese sister Idália Braz, English teacher. She corrected all my texts in two languages for pure love and service to self-encounter pilgrins.

Very good sowing of all this, and may life live forever. 


Vigo, Galicia, Spain, November 13, 2019

LABYRINTH OF LIFE is an artistic reflection pathway of 110 numbered stations of the evolutionary learning of our mindset throughout it. It is not linked to any religion or any particular ideology, but to a search for self-encounter and harmonious integration with one's essence.

Each number refers to each possible year of our existence.


The Labyrinth stations run along pilgrimage trails that seek to broaden our awareness, and their stages coincide with the various official or timeless options of the 
Portuguese Way leading to Santiago.

 ULTREIA (Forward)Greetings from Manuel Castelin, the author of these guide-cards, (only a wanderer more, who has passed his latest  40 years on the path of  the Way of the Stars, across the European and  American continents).

This work, wroten in my traveller English, can be used  to walk  along an imaginary, virtual way, without one's leaving  one's  own  usual space, or it can be a preparation for  the Physical Way, one foot after  the other,  observing, simultaneously, both what is happening in the world around us, and  what is happening  in one's inner world.

Actually, these cards can be used  for each and every way, but I have  adapted them to the Portuguese Santiago Way.

 In fact, in the past  I had  already created other guide-cards  related to  the French Way.
 https://www.facebook.com/Milky-Way-Pilgrims-765349793599944/


https://youtu.be/T9BI2W6Lh5s  Video El Camino Mágico de Santiago.


Of course, the Physical Path, which I recommend, has an enormous advantage over  the virtual one. At a certain time  you decide to leave  your personal and usual enviroment  (where you find yourself  solidly chained to the matrix by a thousand habits and routines, relationships that come from the past  and also expectations, obligations and future commitments), and you start  walking either from Lisbon, from Porto or from Valença do Minho,





During the first four days, your mind will keep on  chewing the same past and future over which  it used to ruminate at your home, and you won't almost be able to  disconnect from your mobile phone. However, on the fifth day, you will begin to pay more attention to  everything new that is happening  here and now... 

It is possible  that, when you arrive  at  the Sixth Stage, you will be  almost totally  focused  on the present. This would suppose your first success upon the Walking Way.

Because of  that , for those  people who can only experience  the Virtual Way, it would be good if  they got the courage and decided  to discipline themselves  to do a daily walk away from  their own  usual enviroment, even  if it were just  a short one , in order to imagine themselves  walking upon  the physical stage of the Geographic Way, either  alone or with someone else keeping them company, as they wish, in order to  think about  its text, and how  to apply it to what they are observing or coming across  during their walk... 

And in order that, at the end, they can  meditate for a while, practising the conscious inattention to the agitated speech of their ego and trying to feel, with their  calmed mind, those intuitions which come from their Real inner self . 
Meditation, joined to purification effort of walking along the day, and charging the cosmic sensibility battery contemplating the stars by night, are the main instruments of the pilgrim exercice: walking on the present, meditating, contemplating and, as a consequence, reflecting and getting conscience.


 THE ROUTES

There may be several other traditional routes in Poortugal, such as, for example, the one which crosses the Peneda-Gerês Park, that connects with the end of the French Way, but this one  is advisable to  super-walkers alone .

Here we present FOUR OPTIONS so that any person, of any age and condition, can accomplish  the Portuguese Way of Santiago.



The first option consists of starting from Lisbon and following through until you reach Porto, (or starting from Porto up to Vilarinho), and then following the Central Way, the one which goes across the inland of Portugal, roughly 28 days-stages of the Way, from Lisbon up to Santiago de Compostela, the MOST OFFICIAL ROUTE.

Still included in the First Option, it is possible to make a shorter trip by starting  from Valença do Minho -6 days-stages and 117 kms. until the end. This is the minimum covered distance that is  demanded   to accomplish  the Way officially, that is,  within  the norms, having your credencial stamped three times a day, at official places, sleeping in official boarding-houses,  and finally, while arriving at Santiago,  receiving  an official certificate that is called "A Compostelá", in Galician, which declares that you have been a pilgrim in fact, just like  the Catholic Church commands. 

The second option, for those who prefer to walk along the beaches, there is the Second Option,  the Way of the Coast. It consists of  leaving the city of Porto towards Labruge, and  following  the indications. They are 10 to 13 days-stages until the end. It is the ALTERNATIVE ROUTE and it is also OFFICIAL.

The Third Option, (it does not matter  which of the routes you have followed to get  to Pontevedra), consists of  heading  for Compostela  from this city on, choosing the enchanting  route called “Spiritual Variant and Translatio”. It is still an OFFICIAL ROUTE.

 Finally, the Fourth Option,will be for the ones who have decided to take the Way of the Rias (Galician bays, firths or fiords), disregarding the place where their pilgrimage has begun, leaving from Valença do Minho and Tui  which  are the Portuguese and Spanish portals of the, for the time being,  UNOFFICIAL ROUTE, of the Intuitive and Timeless Trip (the most recommended by the author of these cards for those  least conventional searchers), with several free creative choices, according to the wanderer's preferences.


By walking along  its “ Timeless Stages ” you will not win, for the time being,  the Compostelá. Nor will you have stamped your official credentials.  But this may pave the way for  the special Self-Discovery that was coveted by the pilgrims of the European tribes, previous to Christianism, who used to travel up to the end  of the world that they knew , and where it was said that the Fortunates'  Islands could be found. 

WARNING : This route is meant  for only  mad people, spirit adventurers, poets and Nature lovers, super-respectful to It.



  LABYRINTH'S CARDS

These cards came from an inspiration received in the deepest of the Brazilian Amazon Rainforest in 1989, I narrated  it in"The Drink of Power", which is on the internet in Portuguese and Spanish, ask Uncle Google: "Manuel Castelin, La Bebida del Poder".

They have inspired many other works over many years, among them, which are freely available to all by invoking “EN/STARS WAY GUIDE CARDS” on Facebook.

Finally came arise from all my previous experiences what I try to be my work of maturity and my legacy, and I set it as a game board The Way of St. James, because it links the cultures most loved by me, Lusitanian and Hispanic, both in the borders of the main river in my land, which became universal civilizations on the borders of the oceans.  



 On the age of explorring globalization we are submerged in, I trust that Luspania, or Latinia, or Ibéric o Latin-American Confederation -or any other name which would be voted by majority (surely blended with the best of other universal cultures, because the hispanization of North America), becomes one of the most fraternal blocs of humankind's global civilizations. And I bring to it my humble grain of sand with all love and hope.


PENETRATING INTO THE LABYRINTH.

You can observe that 56 of these cards refer to concret  geographic plavces, but not tne rest ones, until completting 110. 

You will notice that 56 of these cards refer to concrete geographic locations, but not the rest, until you complete 110.

The first ones, MINOR CARDS, are the stage-cardss of the four options of the Path, of which we have already spoken, and the second, (Essential Continuum and the 24 MAJOR CARDS), the state of consciousness cards (the states which the author recommends observing and cultivating within himself) from the moment that you have asked your Inner Guide to choose such a letter with pure tact and with your eyes closed.



 The geographical places you pass or imagine passing are no more than mirrors of your Inner Walk through states of consciousness. This is the only thing that really matters to us, so you can do the Star Trek virtually or mentally on this or any other path.

The concrete geographical route is not decisive, so you can choose, according to your tastes, the inland route or the one that looks at the sea… associations and municipalities can create more attractive trails and routes than currently available, and multiply the options. 

It would not hurt the pilgrims if they wondered why Camino de Santiago is precisely symbolized by a shell, Compostela being a country town with no beaches.


Now that no one listens to us, this old walker tells you a secret in your ear, if you will, reader friend: I suspect there are no more sacred routes or places than others. 

You shouldn't have them, because the whole earth is sacred, if you look at it from a sacred perspective, that is, from a search for your inner reality, for which the ideal frame is the quiet, beauty and purest nature.

Also the whole earth can be unholy, if the observer is totally asleep or numb before it, or if it takes a purely tourist, historical or sporting walk among noisy crowds, consume culture and spiritual hiper-markets.


Both in Portugal and Spain or on the Internet, these last three types of hikers will find, at the foot of the Way, hundreds of posters and webs, full of indications that match their interests.

I leave some links here, to make it easier, without having to worry about that part.

https://www.gronze.com/camino-portugues

https://www.vagamundos.pt/caminho-portugues-de-santiago-as-etapas/
https://www.caminodesantiago.gal/es/planifica/las-rutas/camino-


NOW LET'S IMPORTANT:


 - The traditional Camino de Santiago, the real pilgrimage, has a Christian meaning or, at least, as the Pilgrim's Credential says, a searching attitude.

Sincere Christian believers - our highest respect for them - only have to follow the prescriptions of their religion. To trust in God... or in the Holy Spirit, in their faithful Internal Guide, or in the saints, in their Internal Santiago ... and beeing fraternal, praying and visiting churches, attending Misses, confessing and having communion. It is recommended to avoid arriving in Compostela in the massive month of August.

Who seeks finds. Pilgrimage to a faraway place with an opened attitude for changing and seeking spiritual elevation,  it is easy to understand that widens the mind.

Although pilgrimage to seek merits and miracles, praying over a tomb where the supposed  rests of a saint remain, seems a curious form of spiritual materialism.

For according to an intelligent understanding of the Christian religion, the spirit of the saint ( of an human beeing who became a pure spirit) should be in heaven, and no longer connected to the bones or ashes of the bones that he abandoned eight hundred, one thousand, or nearly two thousand years ago.


In a truly spiritual mindset, the saint's immortal and eternal spirit could be invoked mentally or by word at any time and place, without needing any physically approaching to his poor, more or less corrupt physical rests. 

However, throughout the Middle Age, the Catholic Church dealt very profitably with such superstitions. Many historians say that Diego Gelmírez, the first archbishop of Santiago, too ambitious to be content with large crowds of pilgrins coming to the cathedral he built for venerating the relics of a supposed apostle of Christ, removed from the cathedral of Braga, in Portugal, the relics of two other supposed saints of lower rank, but who also attracted devotees, and took them to the flourishing Compostela.

Believers need only to believe, not in the cunning archbishops like Gelmírez (on the other hand a brilliant and indefatigable promoter of that Way which built Spain), but in God, in our original pure essence, and in the spirits of the saints (or unified human spirits with God), who are said to help their brothers who ask and deserve it.


Or, failing that, the egregore of faith created and sustained along centuries by the collective subconscious, our basic mental program.

 Believers only need to believe, to ask, and to be good people (that is, to have actively cultivated a positive mindset) in order to deserve it.



THE ART OF THESE CARDS can serve, especially, for those persons (it does not matter if believer or no believer persons), who walk with an attitude of internal research, looking for an evolution of the proper mentality, with the aim to go out of the ego that usually we are representing, in order to find our real self.


This will have like result, if  the Way  is walked whith the right feeling, to meet again with the Everything that we are.


 Something much simpler and natural of what imagine those that read sensationalistic  mistic descriptions about illumination. 

Because all the worlds which interest to human beeing, find into his own world. 

For that ones who still did not awaken for te unveiling or for the real feeling of their Real Being, all the parts of the world of illusion that they can contemplate are false, because false (or contemplated from the personal ego and from the conceptual mátrix of the collective imperant egos),  their perception of all continues being.


To recognize  your automatic personality, the ego illusions and its squared religious or ideological beliefs mentality, is the objective of all the First Part of the Way, it does not matter what point of parting you used.

In the Second Part already will try to do something with the ego and with its faking of Reality program, which we learnt to recognize during the First One.

In the Third Part we will center increasingly deeply in attending, further the discurses of ego, in state of opening to the pureest sensitivity free of prejudices, to what our Deep Self have to communicate us.

Because the information that agrees with that which is the essence of ours Original Beeing, extends by itself to anywhere persons and groups are opened to the perception of this reality.

It moves a genetic resonance with them, because it is the most authentic thing that the human beings carried inside, in spite of the indoctrinations of the schools, of the media and of the politicians of the system. 


THE REGIONAL, NATIONAL, INTERNATIONAL AND UNIVERSAL, PILGRINATION WAYS, AND ANY TYPE OF MEDITATION AND SINCERE REFLECTION, ARE EFFECTIVE EMOTIONAL AND MENTAL TOOLS FOR A NECESSARY TAKING OF CONSCIOUNESS, WHICH WILL DISCOVER ALL OUR NATURAL TECHNOLOGIES WHICH FACILITATE OUR FOLLOWING REALIZATIONS.





Good Way, Pilgrim, and Full Attention to that in what you are thinking.




HOW TO USE THE CARDS

Before starting the Path and choosing one of the possible variants, I ask for help from my Inner Guide, my Essential Being, or whatever you want to call your center of consciousness. It is real. Of course. 

I can reflect about the questions I ask on one or several cards, I can create my own combinations in order to consult them. But, attention, Neither these cards nor any others can guess anything.

They CANNOT, simply because the future is not predetermined. You change your course and your future each time you decide to change your previous plans or guidelines. Yourr decisions fix and materialize your dreams.

There is nothing in these letters, neither of esotericism, nor of mysticism, nor about Quantum Physics, nor about any beliebing, although they cannot be alien to the author's eclectic and not-dogmatic culture.

You do not need to receive Kabbalah courses for remembering that your self  is the seed of all creation and all its potentialities.

These cards are not a Tarot, even if they resemble it, because we are free to play with the Tarot or with anything else from any human culture, because being Human, if you cultivate, know, appreciate and use the extensive human culture, and makes it own,it  is one of the sub-entities that you can legitimately claim as belonging to a sub-entity of your being, and this is very superior to what supposes to have been born in this or that place, context or ethnicity. 

Your being is the owner of all identities and none of them can express its very simple complexity.

No one outside yourself can interpret your cards, (if somebody does, his interpretation would be just a personal opinion that, as much, may be  serving jus for  himself). 

No one can either anticipate, or predict what will happen in your life script before you constructively draw it for yourself.



THE SEPTENARIES
(Try to learn a little of  Portuguese and Spanish for walking a better way and oppening yout mind, pilgrim. The traveller who can only comunicate in the own language, never has gone out from home.)


...Without forgiving the begore-born gestation period, tne preparation of our manifestation in this world, by part of our spiritual linaje and our parents.

Nor these  preparation septenaries neither the ones of our realizationn (from our beginning to learn, to conciliate and converting  our aparentently oposite forces in complementary powers), are contabilized into the  time and fisical plane of our body.  

 The atent pilgrim who meditates about his progessive  transformation using these cards, is going to understand this from his entering in Galice.


These cards are only an artifice for helping the intuition and reflection, for refinating our sensitivity, for clarifying our psique and for developing self-consciouness through their images and texts.

His proper search of the most authentic, deep and atemporal of himself, motivated to the author of this work to imagine plastic and wroten forms for describing and organizing the successive descoverings of his inner process along life. Manuel Castelin dedicates it to all the companions who also feel life like the art and the adventure of self-meeting.
  
You can trust in your Inner Guide because you know it is your best You, and not your many masks. Make well this connection. And maintain it-




When I am feeling well conected, I spread the cards on a table, close my eyes and run my hands over them.

By the touch of my fingers, I let my Being to choose one; I look at the images, read the title, and let intuition tell me something.


I take note and thank , without needing any reverent rituals.


Now, I observe at the same card from the opposite side, and look for a second intuition that will complement the message of the first one.


I connect them both, take note, and thank my self without feeling it, nor for a moment, as something that is separated from me.


Use your reason now, reflect. The most important of the consultation is that which touch your rational, in this reflection.
  


 
OUR WALK ALONG LIFE TO SELF-MEETING IS NOT A LINE. No one, but yourself, can mark you the best route you can choose.


...Indications, subjective opinions, commercial suggestions and convenience dispositions of the local governments are only profane norms.


THE ONLY SACRED NORM IS TO RESPECT THE PATHWAYS, WHICH BELONG TO EVERYBODY, AND TO RESPECT THE FREEDOM OF SEARCHING, ELECTION AND SELF-MEETING OF THE OTHER WALKERS.

 At every crossroads which I feel as important, or in every chance to go out of my way for researching and experiencing any opportunity that has arisen, or any significant fact that happened, I can go choosing a new card again.

And to reflect on this mirror of this moment, and to take a fulfilling decision from my being.


Only after enough thought, and never before, I should must consult the Pilgrim's Book. This is a good time for studying the texts which correspond to the numbers of the cards that I elected earlier, for receiving new insights looking at the pictures that were painted thinking about these cards, -my beeing knows how to do it- and to go on reflecting.


There are only your inner intuitions, more or less considered by your personal reflections, which will decide emotionally or rationally (as we have always decided), your personal path and your actions.

From my reflections has to rise a decision and a firm purpose to be followed and cultivated, at least during a week. Decide, do it.


Reflection without realizing decision is like flower without fruit.





A new paradigm of world civilization, or two, or three, based on fraternity and trust,( which  doesn't need  any  violent revolutions or directed and manipulated social engineering at all ) is developing right now as a potentiality , from the deep  arising  awareness that absolutely all beings on this blue planet have the same essence and belong to the great family of Life.

And this is what corresponds to this very time in which I write (despite the cannibal landscape that they want to impose on us, in our minds), which is very brief  compared to the evolution beyond our cradle planet, which is already gestating for  the  near future of our children and of our grandchildren.

Our consciousness must find and it will  find adequate  vehicles to extend through  all the areas it can imagine -  it is destined to synthesize differences (INSTEAD OF ANTAGONISING THEM) and to co-create positively about them.

This is a pure matter of training, methods and time. Our path as a species is the broad Star Path.


THE STATIONS OF YOUR WAY TO SELF-MEETING STARTED BEFORE THE MOMENT IN WHICH YOU WAS BORN, THE ESSENTIAL CONTINUUM PREPARED YOUR MANIFESTATION IN THIS PLANE. CLICK HERE


Nenhum comentário:

Postar um comentário