A Conversation with Mark Schoofs
"The more sincerely we entertain spiritual truth in our practical life and work to bring it through as the prevailing vibrational reality, the more we may actually accelerate the pace of challenges coming in." The Monthly Aspectarian: Mark, I know you're widely known as a healer and a spiritual transformation coach. How do you see yourself and your work? Mark Schoofs: Well, I like to think of myself as just that, pretty much self taught, doing my life work. People often tell me that their sense of my work is that I am to help jumpstart people into higher consciousness states. And that happens. I'm very grateful that I can do this work, because in any kind of a workshop setting I seem to be able to pick up people's next steps in their own consciousness growth . . . as those new steps and thresholds are ripening in a super conscious plane. As I pick that up and start facilitating, it can come into conscious realization for those people as well as more for myself. Then my workshops become a richly experiential time of moving into higher consciousness states and feeling blessed by our higher nature, our higher self. TMA: In your promotional material it says something about humans beings designed to live in ecstasy. Little glimpses of it can be found quite often, but this idea of living in it all or most of the time, that gets a little difficult to imagine. MS: I agree, and whenever I personally have the state of my own consciousness being lifted vibrationally into that higher state of being in which ecstasy is the norm, it does feel like the most natural and obvious thing. But this should always be there as our vibrational reality. It's all a matter of vibrations . . . just like a TV dial or a radio dial can tune into many different channels or frequencies, so can our own consciousness. It's an instrument, a tuning instrument. And if we can tune it to a higher level of spiritual truth, then in that higher frequency band what's experienced is that ecstasy is the norm. The thing is, it's not something that's variable like a feeling or an emotion. It's a state of being itself, something that's invariable, something that's constant. Usually, the state of being in the spiritual sense -- spelled with a capital "B" in some of the classical spiritual teachings -- is so abstract and subtle and underlying everything else -- kind of like the movie screen that supports all of the flickering images of the movie . . . yet which is rarely, if ever, appreciated when you're involved in the story. You know . . . you forget about the screen. But it's there. It is the underlying reality that makes all of the other images possible . . . and the nature of that being is ecstasy. To have ecstasy, we don't have to do anything other than to be in that state of being. This has been my experience and I love facilitating this experience for groups. It tends to allow us to just let go of egoic tension habits about whether or not we're going to get what we want in life, about whether or not we're going to make it, survive, prosper, be loved, be accepted, et cetera. TMA: In the face of challenges, health challenges, financial challenges, how do you recommend that people try to stay in that state? MS: That's a good question. The challenges usually are brought in by choice. The choice isn't made on a human level though, it's made more of a soul level, because the soul, ultimately, is scripting our life. And if we find we're in the face of a challenge, we may know that the soul in its wisdom is wanting to test its strength, test its ability to live in truth, test its ability to live in its knowing of its good and its worthiness and all of the divine attributes that the soul is endowed with by Spirit. So the challenge comes along. For example, say we're rejected in love, say our partner rejects us. That doesn't come along to teach us that we're unlovable, even though the feeling that may prevail so strongly at the time of the rejection is, Gee, there's something wrong with me . . . I'm not lovable. That kind of depression can set in. But the point of the challenge is not for us to learn that in fact we're unlovable, the point really is the opposite -- for us to learn ever more deeply that we are lovable. So lovable, in fact, in the spiritual way, that we don't need confirmation or validation from any given one individual to know our lovableness. It works like that, I think, with all challenges. They really come along so that we can own our strength in a completely absolute, self-reliant spiritual style. TMA: Well, above the level we live our lives on, it's easy to do. But on the level that we do live our lives on, it can seem impossible. I'm fond of saying the physical plane is maya -- but when you stub your toe, it hurts. MS: Yes, and again, the ecstasy is not a feeling or an emotion, and spiritual love itself is not a feeling or an emotion. You could be feeling pain, whether it's from a physical thing like a stubbed toe or from an emotional problem like rejection or any other form of pain or unpleasant emotion, and also be in the love and the ecstasy. That's what our Masters have taught us, you know, the various Masters through history who have illustrated that ecstasy is a spiritual constant. You learn to fine tune your consciousness by constantly tuning to the higher frequencies, and finally that becomes such a prevailing norm for you that it's there even in the midst of whatever else comes along. It creates what's often called, in the East, a kind of "non-attachment," which is blissful. See, non-attachment is not flat, non-attachment is blissful. It's bliss on the level of being, it's bliss on the level that knowing that nothing matters because life by its nature is full and nothing needs to be added or contrived or manipulated or formulated in the flux and flow of human experience for the bliss to in fact be there. It's just there. It's just there. The words mean nothing, though, without the experience. I've found through the years that my workshops need to be very experiential. I've found that I simply cannot impose a teaching or an idea into a workshop setting. I've learned to let go of all ideas of what's going to happen in a workshop . . . and literally, with the start of a workshop, I surrender. I just make myself available to pick up, as I said, the ripening next steps for the group and see if I can facilitate them, and off we go. We just kind of surf in the spontaneous energy of the spiritual awakening. TMA: Higher truth is easy to understand intellectually. MS: (laughs) Right! We've been working on that long enough. TMA: Easy to understand intellectually, but experiencing it, especially in the face of challenges, can be extremely difficult. MS: Yes, and the truth is, the more sincerely we entertain spiritual truth in our practical life and work to bring it through as the prevailing vibrational reality, the more we may actually accelerate the pace of challenges coming in. TMA: Because that in itself will be challenged. MS: Yes, and we want to know our strengths. We simply want to know our spiritual strength as something that's absolute, otherwise we couldn't quite live it to its full degree of ecstasy. TMA: So what kinds of exercises, techniques, methods, do you employ? MS: A lot of the focus of my teaching has become allowing people to directly understand and experience and access and activate the higher dimensional chakras. These are energy centers that are above the ground. In the past we always understood that there was a body chakras system of seven major chakras, and the highest one was the crown chakra. But in more recent times, as the transformation for planet Earth has come forth more and more, we've become ready to have higher chakras come on line. I like that computer word "on line." As our equipment is ready to become more sophisticated, we can have more things come on line. And these are centers or chakras above the crown that are up there -- I'm going to say "above the head" but, needless to say, "up there above the head" means in higher dimensional space than in physical space. If it was just in physical space, you'd bump them when you walked through a doorway, for example! But there's five chakras above the head that I've been learning about in the last couple of years. (Again, I'm self taught on this.) These are the portals of our higher nature. These are the energy centers through which various frequency bands of our higher nature can come vibrating into our kind of stream of being. The names I've learned to associate with these frequency bands are soul, super conscious self, Christ nature, angelic nature and "I Am" presence. You're familiar with the words, "I Am"? TMA: Sure. MS: These are well known, of course, in mystical traditions, and people have worked in different ways to awaken these aspects of our higher nature. It's exciting, though, now that we can just directly access the chakras themselves . . . through which these aspects of our higher nature can kind of download into our computer system, so to speak. TMA: So you're directing people to pay attention to these higher levels . . . MS: Yes, it becomes an energetic aspect of our consciousness habits that we become aware of how open or closed, how invigorated or inhibited our higher dimensional chakras are functioning at any given time. I teach people exercises to directly reinvigorate and reopen and expand and also heal these higher dimensional chakras. It's interesting that they can need healing, because it turns out to be true that they can actually carry old soul memories and wounds and energy blocks and so on. A lot of my teaching focus is directed towards that and also to healing and invigorating the channels that connect these chakras. You know, there are vertical channels that run from each level down to the next level. TMA: In what ways do you heal and clean these? MS: My healing work, Guy -- again I'm self taught -- but the way it tends to go is that the inner presence, what I like to call the "Inner Being" or divine presence within a person, the super conscious aspect of a person that knows what's really going on -- TMA: The part that is having fun even when the world is burning, right. MS: You could say that, yes. The part that's really grounded in wisdom and soul perspective shows me what's really going on in terms of what needs to be understood and what needs to be healed. More often than not, it's the spontaneous mobilization of healing energy by this inner spiritual presence within a person that actually accomplishes the healing. Beyond that, sometimes I'm guided to do specific healing techniques; when that's appropriate, I just get shown those techniques and then I facilitate them for the person. It may be, for example, using violet flame, which is a well-known healing technique you've probably heard of. It's a specific frequency, a very high frequency of healing light that has a marvelous ability to transmute that which is dense or dull or blocked. The violet flame is a technique that was gifted into humanity by St. Germaine, who is my closest inner guide. Ultimately the technique that accomplishes healing is intention. I'm not much into complicated techniques. I find more and more that if the intention is to clear something and heal something and transmute something, it happens. TMA: Intentionality is there. MS: And there's a phenomenon in healing that I call "jigs up" or some people say "gigs up"; it means that when something is understood for what it is, it can't stay that way anymore. Jigs up. So if there's an old dysfunctional pattern or energy block or wound -- and usually soul wounds or soul memories are patterns of the soul feeling so impacted by a past life experience that it's reacting in fear or hurt or guilt or whatever, and hasn't found a way to get enough healing light back into that compacted pattern. The truth is, of course, that that fear or guilt or whatever the pattern is, is contrary to spiritual truth. Our spiritual truth is that we were created in grace, and that our goodness is quite divine . . . and divinely endowed into us as our very nature . . . and is such that on the spiritual plane of truth, there never is any question about our goodness or worthiness or so on. TMA: Now we're back to where it's easy to understand intellectually. MS: Right. But see, once there's actually an energy block that's persisting because of non-truth, because of straying from the spiritual truth, then when healing consciousness is brought to bear on that block, "jigs up" occurs. It just does. I've seen this countless times where an old pattern of fear or whatever can't stay in that form anymore because the higher consciousness of truth dissolves it. It's like truth and non-truth can't both exist in the same place at the same time because they're opposites. It's like that idea that you can't serve two masters. TMA: What do people generally experience in your workshops? What kinds of things happen? MS: Most of all, Guy, they feel a vibrational lifting. That seems to be my job -- just to jumpstart people into higher states. Everything is energy, and we are energy beings, and everything that is energy by nature can vibrate in various frequency ranges -- from those that are relatively slow or limited, upwards on a scale to those that are very, very expansive and high and fast and unlimited . . . eventuating, of course, in the ultimately high expansive frequency which is the pure spiritual energy which we call Light. According to people's readiness, on a workshop they'll find themselves starting to experience higher frequency ranges. In the body, this accomplishes a shift from what we normally have been in and is being called a lot these days "a third dimensional energy state," shifting to what's appropriately called now "a fourth dimensional energy state." In a fourth dimensional energy state, the body is no longer feeling locked into being merely physical and limited and vulnerable and kind of in trouble. It's much like in the history of science where in the old days scientists believed that little bits of matter like atoms and particles and so on were merely matter; that the ultimate thing was just the little atoms of matter. In more recent times, of course, they've understood that there's so much more than matter within a particle. There's the inner planes of energy dancing and very alive. TMA: It's interesting that science is beginning to realize that the universe is consciousness. MS: Yes, it's about time. So it's the same with our body. Even though we may have had a very limited sense of the body as being physical -- and hence limited and mortal and vulnerable and in trouble and at risk in different ways -- all along, the body has had an inner life of energy. That's the fourth dimensional energy state that we can shift into just by kind of letting go of the old tension that may hold the body in a more collapsed and seemingly merely physical life. Letting go of that tension takes the body into kind of a quantum state. Just like in physics they say it's a quantum universe out there where everything has a quantum nature of being both matter and energy, our bodies are meant to live in a quantum state in which we equate freely, can express the dance of our energy into the physical plane as a physical body with physical form that on its own level can be recognized as flesh and blood and all that. And yet, the body is more than that, and we consciously know it and live it and enjoy it . . . that the body is energy and energy is alive. And energy, in turn, is downloading into this energy system from higher planes, from Source. Ultimately, as they say in physics, you have to ask the question: Well, where did all this energy come from? They bring forth theories of things like a unified field and a vacuum state and so on; something that's transcendent and constant and infinite and really is more on the level of consciousness, like you said, than even the level of energy. And of course that's true. That's exactly the kind of cosmogeny sequencing in the universe where things start on that abstract level of consciousness which is transcended; it's deeper even than energy. And then from that source, what people usually call Spirit, energy flows and expresses and starts to dance in various frequency ranges . . . and ultimately can even be precipitated all the way into physical expression. It can be a very inspiring workshop experience to recapitulate that flow of our own origins into expression, into fully individuated soul consciousness and then into the body as a vehicle that the soul inhabits by choice -- and to get back in touch with the good reasons for the choice, because choices are never made without a good reason. When we get back in touch with the good reasons, really, that's a matter of getting back in touch with the divine Love itself, which ultimately is the only thing that can hold things in form.
Mark Schoofs' reputation for helping people to unfold their lives, joyously, from the Higher Presence within them, coupled with his deep intuitive knowledge of the subtle energetics of transformation, have made him a highly sought speaker and workshop leader.
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