THE LAST TWENTY YEARS OR SO, spiritual/new age authors have sent this message to readers: “You have something broken about you and I can fix it.”

Now a newer, truer message must be heard: “You are here to deliver a beautiful gift to the world – and it’s a gift that benefits everyone. Remember it, and get on with it.”

It is with great pleasure that I share this series of articles with you, discussing the thirty spiritual principles that weave the fabric of human life. These principles, and this whole body of information, are thoroughly discussed in my book, The Invisible Garment. However, because they are living, evolving, ever-unfolding frequencies, there seems to be no end to the discussions of the various principles. This month, the principle of Placement takes our focus.

With your sun, your primary principle in Placement, we know that you are a stabilizing force for all who know you. You could be called the anchor point for your entire soul cluster, and it is probable that you fill that role for your friends and family, too. You are the centering force around which all vibration can express. This most likely means that on the most superficial levels, where you live, work, and focus your life is very important to you. On the more esoteric levels, it means that you are deeply rooted in your beingness and that this rootedness radiates out of you to the other people around you. Each step that you take on the earth creates a ripple effect, like walking on water, and it actually provides help and motivation for others in your sphere.

Does this sound familiar? Even if these statements do not directly apply to you, they most certainly describe someone you know. Everyone magnetizes to the person who has Placement in his or her fabric, because they stabilize situations, they make life seem more real, they establish a sense of “home” in any environment.

If Placement plays an important role in your life, you immediately know what it means to say, “You are a stabilizer.” People who are influenced by the principle of Placement hold the anchors, and they set the trends, although they do not necessarily mean to. Their self-understanding just radiates, and the rest of us feel infused by their powerful uniqueness. Madonna’s Venus -- her emotional body -- is in Placement. Joan of Arc’s moon -- her mastery – was in Placement. In two very different ways, and two very different centuries, they each established a new form, a new reality, a new way of being in the world.

Carlos Castaneda, in his first book, The Teachings of Don Juan, told a story about his teacher taking him into a room and asking him to find his “power spot.” Left alone all night, Carlos suffered for hours trying to find the right spot – the right placement. You see, Carlos’s ethical body (his ascendant) was in the principle of Placement. Don Juan knew that (although he used a different vocabulary), and he created this test for his new student to find out what Carlos knew about his own authentic being. It turned out that like most of us, Carlos knew next to nothing about his own essence.

Don Juan’s testing to see if Carlos could find his power spot functioned as an esoteric irony. He asked Carlos to find a “place,” but he was actually looking to see if Carlos had a deeper understanding of the original principle, Placement. (Carlos failed on both counts, but that began a long and amazing relationship between unlikely pair, teacher and student.)

If you’ve been reading these articles, or if you have read The Invisible Garment, you may have noticed that I capitalize the principles. I admit, I wish there were another way to punctuate them, as I’ve had some judgments in the past about the overuse of capitalization when I’ve read “new agey” material. However, I can’t really come up with a better way to make the words stand up and out properly.

In trying to articulate this body of information, I’ve chosen commonly used words to describe the particular vibrations or frequencies that create the world of perceptual reality. Each of these words carries a definition that is ordinarily used. But, in its spiritual form, each of these definitions changes. This change of definition creates the need for the spelling to slightly change.

Placement is no exception. In its ordinary usage, placement means to be located or situated in an identifiable spot. However, in its spiritual usage, Placement becomes the primary stabilizing principle. Placement’s synonyms are stabilization, identification, or establishment. Placement serves as the foundation for all other manifestation.

People who carry placement in their weave have that special “it” that the rest of us can see, but cannot define. Madonna, Joan of Arc, Carlos Castaneda – they all radiated an “it-ness” by simply walking into a room. One of the most exciting aspects of studying this body of information is the freedom it gives us. I don’t have Placement in my weave. There may have been a time in my immaturity that I suffered, wondering why I didn’t have “it,” as I sat quietly by watching the “popular kids” have all the fun. Now, I can celebrate the “it” of someone else, knowing that my job awaits me in other arenas. It’s much more fun to watch, enjoy, and celebrate Madonna than to try unsuccessfully to BE Madonna, don’t you think?

Of course, the “it” of Placement does not always manifest in its cleanest, most divine potential. Adolph Hitler had Placement in four different positions in his weave. Can you see a similarity in Hitler and Madonna? Certainly not in looks, in intention, in purpose, or in result. But I think we can definitely see that each of them had/has the ability to electrify an audience, establish a frequency, galvanize a mood.

When we look at each other’s principles, we must remember that the fundamental frequency behind the principle never changes. It has no shadow, because these principles come from the light that pierces through form to illuminate essence. The individual’s personality, and his or her choices about how to allow these frequencies to manifest through their lives, is the changing element.

Fifteen years ago I started teaching a spiritual practice that roots itself and reveals itself in our dreams. When we go to sleep, we have an exchange of energy with the level of consciousness called unity consciousness, or human-soul consciousness. The stories that we write – those things we call dreams – are our personal minds’ attempts to remember what we experienced during this exchange in the void. This spiritual practice involves listening to the information of the dream as if it were a message (a love letter, if you will) from the human soul, rather than interpreting it as a psychological event in the subconscious mind of the dreamer. When we come to dream circle, we come in ceremony, we share without need for personal gain, and we listen to all the dreams that are brought to circle as if they were one dream. This helps us break the myopic habit of personalizing and thereby limiting the dream.

One of the first things that we noticed about our dream messages was that they almost always locate themselves. With very few exceptions, the first sentence of a dream starts with, “I was in. . .” Interestingly, we noticed that more often than not, most of the dreams shared on any one night located themselves in the same kind of place. One night we might all be in our houses, or in some house that we know well. Other nights we might all be in a retreat center or attending a seminar. Still other nights we might all bring dreams located in a public place – an airport, a hotel lobby, a mall. And still at other times we might all be in centers of learning: a university, a school, a library.

Placement reveals itself to us through our dreams. A dream starts by identifying its placement – its location. But like Don Juan’s ironic test, the kind of information that unfolds through the dream has a direct relationship to the principle of Placement. We will receive a teaching in the university dreams (I call them Universe City dreams.) We may meet up with someone who has crossed over in the hotel lobby or airport dreams. We will most often discover long-forgotten rooms in our house dreams. And from our retreat dreams, we awaken regenerated, refreshed.

Each of these principles has a numerological correspondent. Placement corresponds to the number zero. It is the number that augments all other numbers. It means “nothing” and yet when added to any other number, it multiplies it’s value. The original sentence of a dream may not mean much in the greater scheme of the dream story, but in fact Placement establishes the unfolding of the information sent by the soul through the dream.

Think about how Placement operates in your life.

Whether or not Placement appears in you pattern, notice this month the way spiritual energies establish themselves around you. Look for the ‘esoteric ironies’ that constantly test you.

Notice when and under what circumstances you feel rooted, grounded, stabilized. If Placement is not in your garment, who in your life gives you the blessing of stabilizing your energy?

© Connie Kaplan, 2005