Nehanda in the Land of Pura Vida
Nehanda and the Unconditional Love experiment at a Costa Rica conference
Love: the Pink-Scarlet-Fuchsia Ray
Costa Rica is such a gorgeous, gorgeous country, from the natural world to the people. A true tropical paradise.
Nehanda is all the way across the ocean for a conference. Nehanda’s roommate, a woman from Europe, was regaling Nehanda with her self-satisfaction at having astutely and wisely added another week to her stay, because it would be a sin to go to all the trouble to make this trip and not find time to be a tourist. Costa Rica has more national parks per capita and by percentage of total territory than any other nation in the world: Corcovado, the Tortugas, Monteverde, Arenal, the list of beautiful places goes on and on. You can eat anything in the country and drink the water anywhere without risk of illness. There’s good reason that Pura Vida, “Pure Clean Living,” is the national motto.
The conference is her roommate’s excuse to be in Costa Rica, of course, but also the country is a fitting setting for the study material: Love: A Force of Nature. As a whole, the people of Costa Rica are as loving a society as can be found anywhere on our sweet Earth.
Nehanda listens and tries to understand her roommate’s life circumstances as best she can, but they live in worlds much further apart than even Europe and Africa are. Because Nehanda was given this conference out of the blue. It is Nehanda’s first time outside of Africa, her first time flying on an airplane, and her first time at a swanky resort of any kind. To say that Nehanda is disoriented is putting it mildly. Nehanda, when she was looking down on the Atlantic Ocean from her window seat on a wide-body commercial jetliner, had never even seen the Atlantic Ocean from ground level or sea level.
Dr. Magdala is the perfect master presenter for this information. She introduces the students in the conference to a core element of the Academy, a required course about Love.
The human body is a tri-partite construction. Part 1 is the head region, the area above the neck. Part 2 is the mid-region, the throat and chest. Part 3 is the lower region, dominated by the digestive tract and organs.
Part 1 of the Human Body (the Head)
The endocrine glands in the head are called the pineal and the pituitary. Both names begin with the same 2 letters. In most people, according to autopsies, the pineal is shrunken and misshapen and appears to be shriveled, probably because it is dormant, inactive. The pineal gland operates the so-called “third eye,” a mystical energy center associated with gurus and religious leaders and enlightened people and prophets and teachers.
The pituitary is the center of the mind, what people often call the “brain.” The brain is typically the organ associated with the individual personal consciousness. However, that consciousness, that personal identity, your personal identity, does not reside in an organ of the human body. It resides in an invisible place beyond the human body. Nevertheless, in our incomplete understanding of the nature of reality, we think of ourselves as being located in the brain: specifically, in the pituitary.
Part 2 of the Human Body (the Heart, or Mid-Region)
The endocrine glands in the mid-region are called the thyroid and the thymus. Both names begin with the same 3 letters. The thyroid corresponds with the human center of speech and expression. It is the physical locus of the voice. So while the pituitary is the locus of the identity of a person who is mind-based, an intellectual, the thyroid is the locus of that person’s voice.
An explanation of the thymus will follow, after this background material is covered.
Part 3 of the Human Body (the Gut, or Lower Region)
Notice the remaining endocrine glands do not appear to have similar names: the adrenal glands, the testis and ovary, the glands in the pancreas. The anus is also an energy center, according to some mythologies which associate it with the root chakra. Although at first glance this region might not seem important, nevertheless people are said to have “guts,” people sometimes rely on their “gut instinct,” so trust me, the gut is a highly valuable center of human experience as well.
Be advised that this tri-partite description is merely one perspective, and a perspective that might not even be particularly valuable. However, everyone can understand this view of the human body because it matches what everyone can see. The more nuanced descriptions of the human energy system are less accessible, because only select people can see the finer elements of the electromagnetic field of the human body, like chakras and auras. The rest of us only see the densest elements of the body, the actual flesh and bones and organs.
This entire block of background material begs the question: What role does balancing the Head, the Heart, and the Gut play?
The answer lies in answering this question:
What is a Pirate?
We’ll get to that later.
Dr. Magdala goes on to explain how the human body is a transformer.
Imagine a portable radio. The radio senses different frequencies and channels out in space, out in the ethers. Music. Sports. News and politics. George Noory. It then converts these broadcasts into audible sound, for the listener to enjoy.
Like the radio, the human body is also a transmitter. It takes frequencies, rays, beams of information, and broadcasts of different types, and allows a person to respond and to direct speech and action into the physical world, our world.”
Nehanda has never heard any of this before. The good professor is just introducing the class to the basics, she hasn’t even gotten to the good stuff yet. Nehanda is on pins and needles. For her friends at the conference, the source material is what prompted them to make this trip. For many an American and European, a conference in another country takes a substantial commitment: you carve out a window of time in your otherwise packed and active life, and you pay for the commitment by spending a very decent chunk of money to take an airline flight and get pampered with luxury lodging and quality food. For Nehanda, none of this perspective held any relevance. This was the trip of a lifetime. She had been plucked out of her hut with the dirt floor and the corrugated metal roof, her life with water drawn from the village well, to enter a life that was beyond her wildest dreams. If it hadn’t been for a Clean Water project member who also happened to be an Academy student, she would never have known this life even existed, except through hearsay or perhaps by sheer luck seeing travel photos in a magazine.
She is entranced as Dr. Magdala continues:
We are living in an experiment. This place is called Planet Earth: we call it the world, reality, being a human. This place, the domain of the Emerald Queen, the Green Empress, the Green Goddess, Queen Tara, is a world in which a particular type of Love is at the center of an experimental test trial. You could call Planet Earth a Love Trial Zone. We are living inside a Laboratory, an experimental test facility devoted among other things to testing out this new mode of power. Your life, to a certain extent, is a test run for a new invention.
That’s right, our particular variety of Love is not common in the cosmos.
Unconditional Love is an invention, a fairly new one. We are the test subjects, the crucible, the guinea pigs, for this fairly new force of nature. This experimental world is a laboratory, a test facility, in the application and operation of our particular version of unconditional love. Huey Lewis and his band named it correctly when they put it to music: The Power of Love. The 1960s were an early test-drive of this prototype.”
Nehanda is hanging on every word and drinking it up. It’s a rare treat to hear the real scoop on why, at least one of the reasons why, we are here in the first place.
This Beta Test for Unconditional Love taking place in the human body is centered around the thymus: the thymus is the physical seat of this new variety of power. The thymus is the primary transmitter of love in the human body, like a speaker is the transmitter of a sound system or a radio.
The thymus is called a butterfly gland because it is shaped like a butterfly or a bird, with 2 wings and a central portion. Back to autopsies, if you look up “thymus” you will likely find similar descriptions to the pineal: shrunken, shriveled, doesn’t have any known function, worthless organ, stuff like that.
Shifting gears slightly, think of valentines, like Valentine’s Day greeting cards and messages filled with hearts. Think of the entire collection of emojis used to express love, the various “hearts” of different colors and shapes.
The Valentine is the symbol for the Thymus. The Valentine is a butterfly-shaped object which matches the Thymus in appearance.
A skinny, gaunt valentine is an underdeveloped “heart,” a love organ which is deficient in some way. A fat, juicy valentine is a robust and healthy expression of love.
You are looking at the thymus gland when you are looking at a valentine.
We are learning to express and transmit love: as a society, as a culture, as a global civilization. We are learning how to activate and operate the thymus gland. It is not a tiny worthless organ which might as well be surgically removed and discarded, which some people might propose who are ignorant of its function and purpose. It is a vital cog in the machine. It is as vital, and perhaps even more vital and essential in certain ways, than the brain itself. Notice how people with cognitive challenges nevertheless are super loving. Labels like “autistic” are often used rather ignorantly and condescendingly when the correct label to describe certain “autistic” individuals is, perhaps, blazing beacon of love.
Wow. Not the kind of stuff you hear every day.
Back over the ocean pointing towards O.R. Tambo International Airport in Johannesburg, Nehanda is lost in a reverie. After a few days of adjusting to jet lag from the flight to the conference, she slept soundly and well in the resort deep in the heart of Costa Rica. But now, on the return flight back home to Africa, she is wide awake. Visions of different colored beams of light projecting into the planet and further refining down to impacting on the human body are fixed in her mind. She is digesting the lessons of the conference. What is this school called “the Academy”? Who are these people, the Faculty of this school? What on earth are these lessons they teach, about the human body and love and this laboratory they refer to in discussing our world?
In a few short hours, this amazing trip will be winding down. After the landing in Johannesburg, she looks forward to the series of long bus rides which will carry her on rough and dusty roads through the countryside and villages that Nehanda knows so well. It will be good to be back home in familiar surroundings. Then this trip will be no different than a memory of a space flight, because for Nehanda, taking a jetliner to Central America and back is the equivalent of a space flight for any one of us used to air travel.
As the final stage of her dizzying trip is coming to a close, she thinks back on how this magical whirlwind all got started. Her village made it onto a list of target locations for a group which has the mission of bringing clean sources of drinking water to out-of-the-way places around the world. She met and spoke with some of the staff and construction crew from the non-profit, one thing led to another, and now she has been on a trip that people in her community will be asking her about for years to come.
The final portion of class in Costa Rica is perhaps the easiest for Nehanda. In the cohesive and integrated community of relatives and neighbors in her village, staying in balance and being a stable human being is a given, it is expected. The professor is using a rather creative metaphor, speaking to her predominantly western audience, when she introduces On Being a Pirate:
The Path of Balance is what every person seeks, whether subconsciously or consciously. Happiness in life comes first and foremost from being in a secure place, a peaceful place, a balanced place inside one’s own identity and one’s own body.
A Pirate is what we at the Academy call a person who wishes to be a balanced student. The word Pirate breaks down into three elements: Pi, Ra, and The. Pi is the Head, the human energy centers represented by the Pi-tuitary and the Pi-neal. The is the Heart and Voice, the human energy centers which express through the Thy-mus and Thy-roid. Ra is the binding force that holds it all together.
Being in balance, and therefore comfortable and happy in your own skin, requires being in harmony with each of the energy centers in your body. Your Soul identity is expressed through the pineal. Your Human identity is expressed through the pituitary. Your Voice is expressed through the thyroid. Your Heart is expressed through the thymus. When all those parts of the Self are unified and working in harmony, when they are purposed as a team towards expressing your life purpose and soul contract, that’s when a Pirate is functioning at her and his optimal best.
Ra provides the glue that holds together the Head and the Heart and Voice.
The Ra balance of energy can be imagined as the Light of Life, a radiant sunrise of light beams, like an Art Deco poster with sprays of light emanating from a common source. Ra energy finds it’s way into every corner of our lives, through language. C-re-ative energy. The Earth itself is labeled as The-Ra, i.e. Terra.
Put another way, this entire world is an expression of The Ra energy, a multifaceted kaleidoscope of forms and objects: animal beings, plant beings, humans, weather, oceans, terrains and landscapes.
Monotheism is another term which can describe the totality of The Ra, Thera, Terra. All of life and all of Mother Earth is One Being, One Entity, One Thing. Mono is One, you can see the word “one” incorporated into the prefix. The has been called God. Thee and Thy are the terms of honor and respect that people in some older English-speaking cultures used when referring to each other.
So by finding Yourself, by finding the Greater You or Soul Expression of You that seeks expression in your human body and your human life, your various human body endocrine glands and energy centers harmonize and come into balance.
Be a Pirate. Be your own person.
A “Pirate” is a balanced person, balanced in the Head and Heart with plenty of radiant life energy (Ra-Rey-Ray) to animate and activate the Head and Heart.
A Pirate is a person who is striving for excellence, striving to be the best person they can be. In historic mystery school and spiritual traditions, many words are used, like “Seeker” and “Initiate.” These terms are, by and large, misunderstood and maligned. The Faculty of the Academy is refreshing these words, bringing new life and meaning to them. The Academy is also establishing new words and phrases to provide a better appreciation of these concepts for this time in history.
A Pirate is a pioneer, an adventurer, an Indiana Jones or Marion Ravenwood or Star Wars character. A Pirate is a person who is committed to what is called the spiritual path, the path of continual evolution and self-improvement and excellence.
This concept has been effectively used in advertising: “Be All That You Can Be.” This phrase sums up the promise of soul evolution, soul advancement.
A Pirate is a person who maximizes their enjoyment of the experience of life and the human condition. Awe, wonder, delight, joy, happiness are all part of being a Pirate.
A Pirate is a seeker of wisdom, knowledge, and mastery.
On the second of the noisy, bouncy, dusty bus rides on the journey heading from Johannesburg back towards her home, Nehanda knows that everyone, whether they know it or not, is a Pirate. Every person in the world is on their own personal, special, completely unique path from unconsciousness to conscious awareness of the Self. Each person she sees is a prospective Student in the Academy, because each person in the world will eventually want to find their way home.
The professor’s final words are still ringing in her ears:
The Academy’s curriculum is called Life: A Field Manual. In future we will explore the conditions, skills, and training which need to be fostered in order to ease and accelerate the process of soul evolution and advancement. Basic and Advanced Integrity, Overcoming Addiction, The Middle Way, and so on. Think Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts, the development of excellence of moral character. Think coming into closer and closer harmony and alignment with the natural order.
Nehanda feels blessed to be back in familiar surroundings, and she feels blessed to be alive in this amazing place. Flying across the ocean to a new continent that she has never seen, and will not likely ever see again, has given her an entirely fresh new perspective on the world she has been inside of her entire life. Her so-familiar African home looks to her like the sacred place she somehow always knew it to be, even though, when hardships arise, it can be difficult to feel the enchantment and wonder of being alive. Like everyone else, she gets lost in her world.
In her heart of hearts, Nehanda knows that absolutely everything, absolutely every part of life, is charmed and sacred. When something breaks. When she feels irritable and angry. Taking a pee or a poop. Taking out the garbage. Cleaning. Being at work. Raising her daughter. Taking care of her elderly parents. It isn’t always easy to remember the sanctify of this life, but from now on, even when she forgets, she will know it is there, under the surface, behind the scenes of whatever worldly issue or problem or distraction occupies her attention.