The Course is a system of mind training is what it really is. Its main objective is to reduce fearful thinking and guilt and to promote forgiveness, kindness, healing and inner peace. It is easy going. Students typically share with me that the course opens them to joyfully experiencing and practicing loving kindness. You might begin with this video introduction, <‘What It Says’>.
From A Course In Miracles, let’s examine the opening statements:
Nothing real can be threatened. Nothing unreal exists. Herein lies the peace of God.
A Course in Miracles makes a distinction between the real and the unreal; between knowledge and perception. Divine “Knowledge” is truth, under one law, the law of Love. “Truth” is unalterable, eternal and unambiguous. Truth might be unrecognized, but it will not be changed. Truth applies to everything that God created, and only what God created is real and true. This is beyond learning because it is beyond time and beyond the limited awareness of processing thoughts, feelings, and perceptions.
Truth has no opposite; no beginning and no end. Truth is real, unchanging and it is the serene peace of faithfulness.
“It is particularly helpful to remember applying it when we read in the news about such fearful things as terrorist attacks. If there is anything that seems frightening to us, we can remember this opening statement and it can remind us again that we need not make illusions of attack and death real in our mind. We can return to the Truth. It is our choice. We need not make the sharp edged children’s toys of belief in separation real in our mind. We can ask the Holy Spirit for a different way to see what seems to be in front of us. The Holy Spirit reminds us that there is only Love or a call for Love. And no matter which it is, the appropriate response is Love.”¹
Program Description Introduction and Principles of Miracles from A Course in Miracles
Fear originates from fractured ego mind-like-experiences. An experience of fear is an experience that reinforces belief in separation. Fear is a sharply occurring illusion. Every fearful experience is useful only to remind us that the peace of God is real truth. So, with practice, fear becomes a signal that a fractured ego mind-like-experience is really a call for help and a need for healing, peaceful faith.
The ego cannot understand the difference between real and unreal. With practice, peaceful faith will remove the habits of fear and fearful thoughts. So, if we practice using the opening statement we’ll understand and remember that only Love is real, no matter what sensations or images appear. Consciously return to the serene peacefulness of faith. Practice reinforces our enthusiasm and motivation for continuing training and studying the Course. …
. 1 “A Course in Miracles” Foundation for A Course in Miracles. Web. 06 May 2016. <facim.org/what-is-acim.aspx> .
Any level student / teacher will be welcome. The training sessions cover all 31 chapters, the Song Of Payer, and the Manual for Teachers. Students will have the reading assignments and online resources before each session. There are no fees or expectations. My main objective is to extend joy and to promote discovering serenity, honesty, openness and comfortable willingness to advance in spiritual growth.
The Course is a system of mind training is what it really is. Its main objective is to reduce fearful thinking and guilt and to promote forgiveness, kindness, healing and inner peace. It is easy going. Students typically share with me that the course opens them to joyfully experiencing and practicing loving kindness. You might begin with this video introduction, <‘What It Says’>.
Anyone may join weekly meetings.
7-8:15 pm (USA Eastern times) Saturdays… My email, eric.samsung.email@gmail.com
Any level student will be welcome. There is no charge. From A Course In Miracles, let’s examine the opening statements:
Nothing real can be threatened. Nothing unreal exists. Herein lies the peace of God.
A Course in Miracles makes a distinction between the real and the unreal; between knowledge and perception. Divine “Knowledge” is truth, under one law, the law of Love. “Truth” is unalterable, eternal and unambiguous. Truth might be unrecognized, but it will not be changed. Truth applies to everything that God created, and only what God created is real and true. This is beyond learning because it is beyond time and beyond the limited awareness of processing thoughts, feelings, and perceptions.
Truth has no opposite; no beginning and no end. Truth is real, unchanging and it is the serene peace of faithfulness.
“It is particularly helpful to remember applying it when we read in the news about such fearful things as terrorist attacks. If there is anything that seems frightening to us, we can remember this opening statement and it can remind us again that we need not make illusions of attack and death real in our mind. We can return to the Truth. It is our choice. We need not make the sharp edged children’s toys of belief in separation real in our mind. We can ask the Holy Spirit for a different way to see what seems to be in front of us. The Holy Spirit reminds us that there is only Love or a call for Love. And no matter which it is, the appropriate response is Love.”
Fear originates from fractured ego mind-like-experiences. An experience of fear is an experience that reinforces belief in separation. Fear is a sharply occurring illusion. Every fearful experience is useful only to remind us that the peace of God is real truth. So, with practice, fear becomes a signal that a fractured ego mind-like-experience is really a call for help and a need for healing, peaceful faith.
The ego cannot understand the difference between real and unreal. With practice, peaceful faith will remove the habits of fear and fearful thoughts. So, if we practice using the opening statement we’ll understand and remember that only Love is real, no matter what sensations or images appear. Consciously return to the serene peacefulness of faith. Practice reinforces our enthusiasm and motivation for continuing training and studying the Course. . “A Course in Miracles” Foundation for A Course in Miracles. <facim.org/what-is-acim.aspx> .My main objective is to extend joy and to promote discovering serenity, honesty, openness and comfortable willingness to advance in spiritual growth.
“One night I put my head down on the table where the computer sat and I cried; I just want to know what creates reality. How did I do this to myself? I accidentally hit the enter key and there it was, a quote from Neville Goddard; “Imagination creates reality” and I burst into tears of relief. I knew instantly that was true. My life passed by and I saw all the things I had called to me. I knew it was true.”
I recently decided to retire from the hustle and bustle life. I have a comfortable enough life and I am happy, especially, on the inside. I have a mission. I want to share my joys and experiences, to extend joy, and to increase happiness and abundance in joy.
I came upon Neville Goddard a few years ago, similar to how Rita (above) describes her discovery. Now, I have time to listen to Neville’s lectures and read about his life and his accomplishmens. He was a teacher, as am I. He discovered a personal importance of imagination and spirituality, as do I.
I’d come upon his work, probably 10 years ago. I listened to some of the lectures and I liked his message. He was addressing some of my doubts about the ‘law of attraction’ teachings that were popular at the time. Neville was clearly saying that our imagination and our genuine abilities are activated when we connect with our divine nature.
I’ll have more to say about him in the future. Meantime, here is a brief introduction.
Neville Goddard
Neville Lancelot Goddard (1905-1972) was a prophet, profoundly influential teacher, and author. He did not associate himself as a metaphysician, with any ‘ism’ or ‘New Thought’ teaching as commonly advertised by these collective groups. Goddard was sent to illustrate the teachings of psychological truth intended in the Biblical teachings, and restore awareness of meaning to what the ancients intended to tell the world.
Program description
This is a reading of a 09-09-1968 lecture by Neville . There is only a TEXT version of this lecture by Neville’s students. We now offer a read audio version of this lecture to you.
I’ve been wanting to get back here again, posting blog updates, articles, and recommendations for self-improvement. So, I’ll look forward to connecting more often again with my WordPress friends.
Alan Watts… “I warn you, that by explaining these things to you, I shall subject you to a very serious hoax.”
Here we have a video and transcript (Part 1, Being Let Go; Samadhi):
The World As Emptiness, Alan Watts
This particular weekend seminar is devoted to Buddhism, and it should be said first that there is a sense in which Buddhism is Hinduism, stripped for export. Last week, when I discussed Hinduism, I discussed many things to do with the organization of a Hindu society because Hinduism is not merely what we call a religion; it’s a whole culture. It’s a legal system, it’s a social system, it’s a system of etiquette, and it includes everything. It includes housing, it includes food, it includes art. The Hindus and many other ancient peoples do not make, as we do, a division between religion and everything else.
Religion is not a department of life; it is something that enters into the whole of it. But you see, when a religion and a culture are inseparable, it’s very difficult to export a culture, because it comes into conflict with the established traditions, manners, and customs of other people.
So the question arises, what are the essentials of Hinduism that could be exported? And when you answer that approximately, you’ll get Buddhism. As I explained, the essential of Hinduism, the real, deep root, isn’t any kind of doctrine, it isn’t really any special kind of discipline, although of course disciplines are involved.
The center of Hinduism is an experience called moksha, liberation, in which, through the dissipation of the illusion that each man and each woman is a separate thing in a world consisting of nothing but a collection of separate things, you discover that you are, in a way, on one level an illusion, but on another level, you are what they call ‘the self,’ the one self, which is all that there is.
The universe is the game of the self, which plays hide and seek forever and ever. When it plays ‘hide,’ it plays it so well, hides so cleverly, that it pretends to be all of us, and all things whatsoever, and we don’t know it because it’s playing ‘hide.’ But when it plays ‘seek,’ it enters onto a path of yoga, and through following this path it wakes up, and the scales fall from one’s eyes.
Alan Watts – The World As Emptiness, Part 1
Now, in just the same way, the center of Buddhism, the only really important thing about Buddhism is the experience which they call ‘awakening.’ Buddha is a title, and not a proper name. It comes from a Sanskrit root, ‘bheudh,’ and that sometimes means ‘to know,’ but better, ‘waking.’ And so you get from this root ‘bodhih.’ That is the state of being awakened. And so ‘Buddha,’ ‘the awakened one,’ ‘the awakened person.’ And so there can of course in Buddhist ideas, be very many Buddhas.
The person called the Buddha is only one of myriads. Because they, like the Hindus, are quite sure that our world is only one among billions, and that Buddhas come and go in all the worlds. But sometimes, you see, there comes into the world what you might call a ‘big Buddha.’ A very important one. And such a one is said to have been Guatama, the son of a prince living in northern India, in a part of the world we now call Nepal, living shortly after 600 BC. All dates in Indian history are vague, and so I never try to get you to remember any precise date, like 564, which some people think it was, but I give you a vague date–just after 600 BC is probably right.
Most of you, I’m sure, know the story of his life. Is there anyone who doesn’t, I mean roughly? OK. So I won’t bother too much with that. But the point is, that when, in India, a man was called a Buddha, or THE BUDDHA, this is a title of a very exalted nature. It is first of all necessary for a Buddha to be human. He can’t be any other kind of being, whether in the Hindu scale of beings he’s above the human state or below it. He is superior to all gods, because according to Indian ideas, gods or angels–angels are probably a better name for them than gods–all those exalted beings are still in the wheel of becoming, still in the chains of karma–that is action that requires more action to complete it, and goes on requiring the need for more action. They’re still, according to popular ideas, going ’round the wheel from life after life after life after life, because they still have the thirst for existence, or to put it in a Hindu way: in them, the self is still playing the game of not being itself.
But the Buddha’s doctrine, based on his own experience of awakening, which occurred after seven years of attempts to study with the various yogis of the time, all of whom used the method of extreme asceticism, fasting, doing all sort of exercises, lying on beds of nails, sleeping on broken rocks, any kind of thing to break down egocentricity, to become unselfish, to become detached, to exterminate desire for life. But Buddha found that all that was futile; that was not The Way. And one day he broke is ascetic discipline and accepted a bowl of some kind of milk soup from a girl who was looking after cattle. And suddenly in this tremendous relaxation, he went and sat down under a tree, and the burden lifted. He saw, completely, that what he had been doing was on the wrong track. You can’t make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear. And no amount of effort will make a person who believes himself to be an ego be really unselfish.
So long as you think, and feel, that you are a someone contained in your bag of skin, and that’s all, there is no way whatsoever of your behaving unselfishly. Oh yes, you can imitate unselfishness. You can go through all sorts of highly refined forms of selfishness, but you’re still tied to the wheel of becoming by the golden chains of your good deeds, as the obviously bad people are tied to it by the iron chains of their misbehavior.
So, you know how people are when they get spiritually proud. They belong to some kind of a church group, or an occult group, and say ‘Of course we’re the ones who have the right teaching. We’re the in-group, we’re the elect, and everyone else outside.’ It is really off the track. But then comes along someone who one-ups THEM, by saying ‘Well, in our circles, we’re very tolerant. We accept all religions and all ways as leading to The One.’ But what they’re doing is they’re playing the game called ‘We’re More Tolerant Than You Are.’ And in this way the egocentric being is always in his own trap.
So Buddha saw that all his yoga exercises and ascetic disciplines had just been ways of trying to get himself out of the trap in order to save his own skin, in order to find peace for himself. And he realized that that is an impossible thing to do, because the motivation ruins the project. He found out that there was no trap to get out of except himself. Trap and trapped are one, and when you understand that, there isn’t any trap left. I’m going to explain that of course more carefully.
So, as a result of this experience, he formulated what is called the dharma, that is the Sanskrit word for ‘method.’ You will get a certain confusion when you read books on Buddhism, because they switch between Sanskrit and Pali words.
The earliest Buddhist scriptures that we know of are written the Pali language, and Pali is a softened form of Sanskrit. So that, for example, the doctrine of the Buddha is called in Sanskrit the ‘dharma,’ we must in pronouncing Sanskrit be aware that an ‘A’ is almost pronounced as we pronounce ‘U’ in the word ‘but.’ So they don’t say ‘darmuh,’ they say ‘durmuh.’ And so also this double ‘D’ you say ‘budduh’ and so on. But in Pali, and in many books of Buddhism, you’ll find the Buddhist doctrine described as the ‘dhama.’ And so the same way ‘karma’ in Sanskrit, in Pali becomes ‘kama.’ ‘Buddha’ remains the same. The dharma, then, is the method.
Now, the method of Buddhism, and this is absolutely important to remember, is dialectic. That is to say, it doesn’t teach a doctrine. You cannot anywhere what Buddhism teaches, as you can find out what Christianity or Judaism or Islam teaches. Because all Buddhism is a discourse, and what most people suppose to be its teachings are only the opening stages of the dialog.
So the concern of the Buddha as a young man—the problem he wanted to solve—was the problem of human suffering. And so he formulated his teaching in a very easy way to remember. All those Buddhist scriptures are full of what you might call mnemonic tricks, sort of numbering things in such a way that they’re easy to remember. And so he summed up his teaching in what are called the Four Noble Truths. And the first one, because it was his main concern, was the truth about duhkha. Duhkha, ‘suffering, pain, frustration, chronic dis-ease.’ It is the opposite of sukha, which means ‘sweet, pleasure, etc.’
So, insofar as the problem posed in Buddhism is duhkha, ‘I don’t want to suffer, and I want to find someone or something that can cure me of suffering.’ That’s the problem. Now if there’s a person who solves the problem, a buddha, people come to him and say ‘Master, how do we get out of this problem?’ So what he does is to propose certain things to them. First of all, he points out that with duhkha go two other things. These are respectively called anitya and anātman. Nnitya means permanant, so anitya is impermanance. Flux, change, is characteristic of everything whatsoever. There isn’t anything at all in the whole world, in the material world, in the psychic world, in the spiritual world, there is nothing you can catch hold of and hang on to for safely. Nuttin’ … not only is there nothing you can hang on to, but by the teaching of anātman, there is no you to hang on to it. In other words, all clinging to life is an illusory hand grasping at smoke. If you can get that into your head and see that is so, nobody needs to tell you that you ought not to grasp. Because you see, you can’t.
Buddhism is not essentially moralistic. The moralist is the person who tells people that they ought to be unselfish, when they still feel like egos, and his efforts are always and invariably futile. Because what happens is he simply sweeps the dust under the carpet, and it all comes back again somehow. But in this case, it involves a complete realization that this is the case. So that’s what the teacher puts across to begin with.
The next thing that comes up, the second of the noble truths, is about the cause of suffering, and this in Sanskrit is called trishna. Trishna is related to our word ‘thirst.’ It’s very often translated ‘desire.’ That will do. Better, perhaps, is ‘craving, clinging, grasping,’ or even, to use our modern psychological word, ‘blocking.’ When, for example, somebody is blocked, and dithers and hesitates, and doesn’t know what to do, he is in the strictest Buddhist sense attached, he’s stuck. But a buddha can’t be stuck, he cannot be phased. He always flows, just as water always flows, even if you dam it, the water just keeps on getting higher and higher and higher until it flows over the dam. It’s unstoppable.
Now, Buddha said, then, duhkha comes from trishna. You all suffer because you cling to the world, and you don’t recognize that the world is anitya and anātman. So then, try, if you can, not to grasp. Well, do you see that that immediately poses a problem? Because the student who has started off this dialog with the buddha then makes various efforts to give up desire. Upon which he very rapidly discovers that he is desiring not to desire, and he takes that back to the teacher, who says ‘Well, well, well.’ He said, ‘Of course. You are desiring not to desire, and that’s of course excessive.
All I want you to do is to give up desiring as much as you can. Don’t want to go beyond the point of which you’re capable.’ And for this reason Buddhism is called the Middle Way. Not only is it the middle way between the extremes of ascetic discipline and pleasure seeking, but it’s also the middle way in a very subtle sense. Don’t desire to give up more desire than you can. And if you find that a problem, don’t desire to be successful in giving up more desire than you can. You see what’s happening? Every time he’s returned to the middle way, he’s moved out of an extreme situation.
Now then, we’ll go on; we’ll cut out what happens in the pursuit of that method until a little later. The next truth in the list is concerned with the nature of release from duhkha. And so number three is nirvana. Nirvana is the goal of Buddhism; it’s the state of liberation corresponding to what the Hindus call moksha. The word means ‘blow out,’ and it comes from the root ‘nir vritti.’ Now some people think that what it means is blowing out the flame of desire. I don’t believe this. I believe that it means ‘breathe out,’ rather than ‘blow out,’ because if you try to hold your breath, and in Indian thought, breath–prana–is the life principle. If you try to hold on to life, you lose it. You can’t hold your breath and stay alive; it becomes extremely uncomfortable to hold onto your breath [moksha: release from the cycle of rebirth impelled by the law of karma… a transcendent state attained as a result of being released from the cycle of rebirth].
And so in exactly the same way, it becomes extremely uncomfortable to spend all your time holding on to your life. What the devil is the point of surviving, going on living, when it’s a drag? But you see, that’s what people do. They spend enormous efforts on maintaining a certain standard of living, which is a great deal of trouble. You know, you get a nice house in the suburbs, and the first thing you do is you plant a lawn. You’ve gotta get out and mow the damn thing all the time, and you buy expensive this-that and soon you’re all involved in mortgages, and instead of being able to walk out into the garden and enjoy, you sit at your desk and look at your books, filling out this and that and the other and paying bills and answering letters. What a lot of rot! But you see, that is holding onto life. So, translated into colloquial American, nirvana is ‘whew!’ because if you let your breath go, it’ll come back. So nirvana is not annihilation, it’s not disappearance into a sort of undifferentiated void. Nirvana is the state of being let go. It is a state of consciousness, and a state of, you might call it, being, here and now in this life.
We now come to the most complicated of all, number four and magha. Magha in Sanskrit means ‘past,’ and the Buddha taught an eight-fold path for the realization of nirvana. This always reminds me of a story about Dr Suzuki, who is a very, very great Buddhist scholar. Many years ago, he was giving a fundamental lecture on Buddhism at the University of Hawaii, and he’d been going through these four truths, and he said ‘Ah, fourth Noble Truth is Noble Eightfold Path. First step of Noble Eightfold Path is called shoken. Shoken in Japanese means ‘right view.’ For Buddhism, fundamentally, is the right way of viewing this world. Second step of Noble Eightfold Path is—oh, I forget second step, you look it up in the book.’
Well, I’m going to do rather the same thing. What is important is this: the eight-fold path has really got three divisions in it. The first are concerned with understanding, the second division is concerned with conduct, and the third division is concerned with meditation. And every step in the path is preceded with the Sanskrit word _samyak_. In which you remember we ran into _samadhi_ last week, ‘sam’ is the key word. And so, the first step, _samyak- drishti_, which mean–‘drishti’ means a view, a way of looking at things, a vision, an attitude, something like that. But this word samyak is in ordinary texts on Buddhism almost invariably translated ‘right.’ This is a very bad translation. The word IS used in certain contexts in Sanskrit to mean ‘right, correct,’ but it has other and wider meanings. ‘Sam’ means, like our word ‘sum,’ which is derived from it, ‘complete, total, all-embracing.’ It also has the meaning of ‘middle wade,’ representing as it were the fulcrum, the center, the point of balance in a totality. Middle wade way of looking at things. Middle wade way of understanding the dharma. Middle wade way of speech, of conduct, of livelihood, and so on.
Now this is particularly cogent when it comes to Buddhist ideas of behavior. Every Buddhist in all the world, practically, as a layman–he’s not a monk–undertakes what are called pancasila, the Five Good Conducts. ‘Sila’ is sometimes translated ‘precept.’ But it’s not a precept because it’s not a commandment.
When Buddhists priests chant the precepts, you know: pranatipada: ‘prana (life) tipada (taking away) I promise to abstain from.’ So the first is that one undertakes not to destroy life. Second, not to take what is not given. Third—this is usually translated ‘not to commit adultry’. It doesn’t say anything of the kind. In Sanskrit, it means ‘I undertake the precept to abstain from exploiting my passions.’ Buddhism has no doctrine about adultery; you may have as many wives as you like.
But the point is this: when you’re feeling blue, and bored, it’s not a good idea to have a drink, because you may become dependent on alcohol whenever you feel unhappy. So in the same way, when you’re feeling blue and bored, it’s not a good idea to say ‘Let’s go out and get some chicks and have some sex fun.’ That’s exploiting the passions. But it’s not exploiting the passions, you see, when drinking, say, expresses the vitality and friendship of the group sitting around the dinner table, or when sex expresses the spontaneous delight of two people in each other.
Then, the fourth precept, Musavada, ‘to abstain from false speech.’ It doesn’t simply mean lying. It means, abusing people. It means using speech in a phony way, like saying ‘all niggers are thus and so.’ Or ‘the attitude of America to this situation is thus and thus.’ See, that’s phony kind of talking. Anybody who studies general semantics will be helped in avoiding musavada, false speech.
The final precept is a very complicated one, and nobody’s quite sure exactly what it means. It mentions three kinds of drugs and drinks: sura[?], mariya[?], maja[?]. We don’t know what they are. But at any rate, it’s generally classed as narcotics and liquors. Now, there are two ways of translating this precept. One says to abstain from narcotics and liquors; the other liberal translation favored by the great scholar Dr Malanesecreta[?] is ‘I abstain from being intoxicated by these things.’ So if you drink and don’t get intoxicated, it’s OK. You don’t have to be a teetotaler to be a Buddhist. This is especially true in Japan and China; my goodness, how they throw it down! A scholarly Chinese once said to me, ‘You know, before you start meditating, just have a couple martinis, because it increases your progress by about six months.’
Now you see these are, as I say, they are not commandments, they are vows. Buddhism has in it no idea of there being a moral law laid down by some kind of cosmic lawgiver. The reason why these precepts are undertaken is not for a sentimental reason. It is not that you’re going to make you into a good person. It is that for anybody interested in the experiments necessary for liberation, these ways of life are expedient. First of all, if you go around killing, you’re going to make enemies, and you’re going to have to spend a lot of time defending yourself, which will distract you from your yoga. If you go around stealing, likewise, you’re going to acquire a heap of stuff, and again, you’re going to make enemies. If you exploit your passions, you’re going to get a big thrill, but it doesn’t last. When you begin to get older, you realize ‘Well that was fun while we had it, but I haven’t really learned very much from it, and now what?’ Same with speech. Nothing is more confusing to the mind than taking words too seriously. We’ve seen so many examples of that. And finally, to get intoxicated or narcotized–a narcotic is anything like alcohol or opium which makes you sleepy. The word ‘narcosis’ in Greek, ‘narc’ means ‘sleep.’ So, if you want to pass your life seeing things through a dim haze, this is not exactly awakening.
So, so much for the conduct side of Buddhism. We come then to the final parts of the eightfold path. There are two concluding steps, which are called Samyak smriti and Samyak Samadhi. Smriti means ‘recollection, memory, present-mindedness’ … seems rather funny that the same word can mean ‘recollection or memory’ and ‘present-mindedness’ Bbut smriti is exactly what that wonderful old rascal George Gurdjieff meant by self-awareness, or self-remembering. Smriti is to have complete presence of mind.
There is a wonderful meditation called ‘The House that Jack Built Meditation,’ at least that’s what I call it, that the Southern Buddhists practice. He walks, and he says to himself, ‘There is the lifting of the foot.’ The next thing he says is ‘There is a perception of the lifting of the foot.’ And the next, he says ‘There is a tendency towards the perception of the feeling of the lifting of the foot.’ Then finally he says, ‘There is a consciousness of the tendency of the perception of the feeling of the lifting of the foot.’ And so, with everything that he does, he knows that he does it. He is self-aware. This is tricky. Of course, it’s not easy to do. But as you practice this–I’m going to let the cat out of the bag, which I suppose I shouldn’t do–but you will find that there are so many things to be aware of at any given moment in what you’re doing, that at best you only ever pick out one or two of them. That’s the first thing you’ll find out. Ordinary conscious awareness is seeing the world with blinkers on. As we say, you can think of only one thing at a time. That’s because ordinary consciousness is narrowed consciousness. It’s being narrow-minded in the true sense of the word, looking at things that way. Then you find out in the course of going around being aware all of the time–what are you doing when you remember? Or when you think about the future? ‘I am aware that I am remembering’? ‘I am aware that I am thinking about the future’?
But you see, what eventually happens is that you discover that there isn’t any way of being absent-minded. All thoughts are in the present and of the present. And when you discover that, you approach samadhi. Samadhi is the complete state, the fulfilled state of mind. And you will find many, many different ideas among the sects of Buddhists and Hindus as to what samadhi is. Some people call it a trance, some people call it a state of consciousness without anything in it, knowing with no object of knowledge. Some people say is is the unification of the know-er and the known. All these are varying opinions.
I had a friend who was a Zen master, and he used to talk about samadhi, and he said a very fine example of samadhi is a fine horse rider. When you watch a good cowboy, he is one being with the horse. So an excellent driver in a car makes the car his own body, and he absolutely is with it. So also a fine pair of dancers; they don’t have to shove each other to get one to do what the other wants him to do. They have a way of understanding each other, of moving together as if they were Siamese twins. That’s samadhi, on the physical, ordinary, everyday level. The samadhi of which Buddha speaks is the state which, as it is, the gateway to Nirvana; the state in which the illusion of the ego, as a separate thing, disintegrates.
Now, when we get to that point in Buddhism, Buddhists do a funny thing, which is going to occupy our attention for a good deal of this seminar. They don’t fall down and worship. They don’t really have any name for what it is, that is, really, and basically. The idea of anatman, of non-self, is applied in Buddhism not only to the individual ego, but also to the notion that there is a self of the universe, a kind of impersonal or personal god, and so it is generally supposed that Buddhism is atheistic. It’s true, depending on what you mean by atheism. Common or garden atheism is a form of belief; namely that I believe there is no god. The atheist positively denies the existence of any god. All right. Now, there is such an atheist, if you put dash between the ‘a’ and ‘theist,’ or speak about something called ‘atheos’–‘theos’ in Greek means ‘god’–but what is a non-god? A non-god is an inconceivable something or other.
I love the story about a debate in the Houses of Parliment in England, where, as you know, the Church of England is established and therefor under control of the government, and the high ecclesiastics had petitioned Parliament to let them have a new prayer book. Somebody got up and said “It’s perfectly ridiculous that Parliament should decide on this, because as we well know, there are quite a number of atheists in these benches.” And somebody got up and said “Oh, I don’t think there are really any atheists. We all believe in some sort of something somewhere.”
Now again, of course, it isn’t that Buddhism believes in some sort of something somewhere, and that is to say in vagueness. Here is the point: if you believe, if you have certain propositions that you want to assert about the ultimate reality, or what Paul Tillich calls ‘the ultimate ground of being’ you are talking nonsense. Because you can’t say something specific about everything. You see, supposing you wanted to say God has a shape. But if god is all that there is, then God doesn’t have any outside, so he can’t have a shape. You have to have an outside and space outside it to have a shape. So that’s why the Hebrews, too, are against people making images of God. But nonetheless, Jews and Christians persistently make images of God, not necessarily in pictures and statues, but they make images in their minds. And those are much more insidious images.
Buddhism is not saying that the Self, the great Atman, or what-not… it isn’t denying that the experience which corresponds to these words is realizable. What it is saying is that if you make conceptions and doctrines about these things, your liable to become attached to them. You’re liable to start believing instead of knowing. So they say in Zen Buddhism, “The doctrine of Buddhism is a finger pointing at the moon. Do not mistake the finger for the moon.” Also, we might say in the West, the idea of God is a finger pointing at God, but what most people do is instead of following the finger, they suck it for comfort. And so Buddha chopped off the finger [metaphor], and undermined all metaphysical beliefs.
There are many, many dialogues in the Pali scriptures where people try to corner the Buddha into a metaphysical position. ‘Is the world eternal?’ The Buddha says nothing. ‘Is the world not eternal?’ And he answers ‘nuttin’. ‘Is the world both eternal and not eternal?’ And he don’t say ‘nuttin’. ‘Is the world neither eternal nor not eternal?’ And STILL he don’t say ‘nuttin’. He maintains what is called the noble silence. Sometimes called the thunder of silence, because this silence, this metaphysical silence, is not a void. It is very powerful. This silence is the open window through which you can see not concepts, not ideas, not beliefs, but the very goods. But if you say what it is that you see, you erect an image and an idol, and you misdirect people. It’s better to destroy people’s beliefs than to give them beliefs. I know it hurts, but it is The Way.
Dharma: is a key concept that signifies behaviors that are considered to be in accord with the order that makes life and universe possible. Dharma is “cosmic law and order” and includes duties, rights, laws, conduct, virtues and ‘‘right way of living” as taught by the Buddha.
Moksha: in Indian philosophy and religion is a liberation from the cycle of death and rebirth (saṃsāra); derived from Sanskrit, the term moksha literally means freedom from saṃsāra.
Samadhi: a state of intense concentration achieved through meditation. In Hindu yoga this is regarded as the final stage, at which union with the divine is reached (before or at death).
Saṃsāra: is a Sanskrit word that means “wandering” or “world”, with the connotation of cyclic, circuitous change. It also refers to the theory of rebirth and “cyclicality of all life, matter, existence” and liberation from Saṃsāra is called Moksha, Nirvana, Mukti or Kaivalya.
The Noble Eightfold Path: is the fourth of the Buddha’s Four Noble Truths, and asserts the path to the cessation of dukkha (suffering, pain, un-satisfactoriness). The path teaches that through restraining oneself, by cultivating discipline, in practicing mindfulness and meditation, the enlightened ones stop their craving, clinging and karmic accumulations, and thus end rebirth and suffering. It is used to develop insight into the true nature of reality, achieve liberation from rebirths in realms of Samsara, and to attain nirvana. In Buddhist symbolism, the Noble Eightfold Path is often represented by means of the dharma wheel (dharmachakra), with eight spokes representing the eight elements of the path. The eight Buddhist concepts in the Noble Eightfold Path are:
right view: the belief that there is an afterlife, that not everything ends with death, that Buddha taught and followed a successful path to nirvana;
right resolve: the giving up home and adopting the life of a religious mendicant in order to follow the path; this concept aims at peaceful renunciation, into an environment of non-sensuality, non-ill-will (to loving-kindness), away from cruelty (to compassion). Such an environment aids contemplation of impermanence, suffering, and non-Self.
right speech: no lying, no rude speech, no telling one person what another says about him, speaking that which leads to salvation;
right conduct: no killing or injuring, no taking what is not given, no sexual acts.
right livelihood: beg to feed, only possessing what is essential to sustain life;
right effort: guard against sensual thoughts; this concept, states Harvey, aims at preventing unwholesome states that disrupt meditation.
right mindfulness: never be absent minded, being conscious of what one is doing; encourages the mindfulness about impermanence of body, feeling and mind, as well as to experience the five skandhas, the five hindrances, the four True Realities and seven factors of awakening.
right samadhi (concentration): practicing four stages of dhyana meditation.
Empathy is the ability to see the world as another person, to share and understand another person’s feelings, needs, concerns and/or emotional state… understanding, being aware of, being sensitive to, and vicariously experiencing the feelings, thoughts, and experience of another… not trying to solve the problems of another, the goal being to share the experiences of feelings; to let them know you’re there and that how they feel matters to you.
Being an empath is much more than being highly sensitive and it’s not just limited to emotions. Sometimes life is unconsciously influenced by others’ desires, wishes, thoughts, and moods.
If sensitivity is a deficiency and a burden, we become weary, needy and very vulnerable… retracting joy into fears and upsets… and self-destructive harm. At this layer of development, the adolescent or adult empath will model co-dependent behaviors… children that are not growing up in an openly accepting loving home may begin modeling co-dependent behaviors before even two years old.
All of us need strong, healthy community supports, shared language at these, and empaths may need to have opportunities to unload the burden of fatigue and emotional upset. With belonging, progress to cultivate personal preferences and learned practices that increase healthy social interaction within the support community. This will strengthen mind, body, extend calm and help remaining grounded.
Empaths need not resign themselves to belief founded on anxiety or past emotional upsets that they must suffer the consequences of a tel-empathic interaction. With guidance from adepts, you may even begin to alter the mood and emotion of others… adjusting them into your calm. Insecurity and immaturity, lack of awareness, inappropriate co-dependent behaviors, use of manipulation, psychosocial drams, etc. can be addressed.
A happy empath extends joy. The ability to perform so, to extend joy always reduces any vulnerabilities.
Simon Lewis is a film and television producer and author. After earning law degrees from Christ’s College Cambridge and Boalt Hall, Berkeley, Lewis moved to Los Angeles, CA. Hollywood experiences include managing writers, directors and stars, and producing “Look Who’s Talking” and critically acclaimed films such as “The Chocolate War” which was an Emmy-winning international production for HBO and ITV Central.
The Extraordinary Story of One Man’s Journey from Near Death to Full Recovery
Lewis is the author of Rise and Shine, his memoir that uses his personal story of recovery from coma to illustrate insights about consciousness. Lewis uses visualizations from medicine, scientific research and digital art to illustrate solutions for society’s pressing problems such as the erosion of consciousness and our need for solutions to extend mind by cognitive and other therapies.
As an advocate for change to educate our children and ourselves, Lewis says we must not take our consciousness for granted. We must screen and detect learning problems diminish barriers, and prevent academic failure to bridge gaps of potential mind and maximize consciousness.
“When I was thirty-five, my wife and I were both reported dead by the first paramedics to arrive at the scene of a seventy-five-mile-an-hour hit-and-run. My wife Marcy died instantly that day. With brain damage from a massive stroke and my body broken, I wasn’t expected to survive either.”
So begins Rise and Shine, a dramatic story of Simon Lewis and his remarkable recovery from a horrific car accident to navigate the health insurance maze, Rise and Shine is an extraordinary first-person account of unexpected tragedy and life-affirming courage.
Rise and Shine demonstrates that patients achieve maximum regeneration to rebuild their lives probably only when there is a great deal of help and support from their family and caregivers.
Enjoy this story about what it means to return to life after a near-death experience. Rise and Shine is an exploration of the nature of consciousness itself, and its a fascinating tale of survival and recovery.
Description: After a catastrophic car accident that left him in a coma, Simon Lewis found ways to recover — physically and mentally — beyond all expectations. At the INK Conference he tells how this remarkable story led him to concern over all threats to consciousness, and how to overcome them.
What if (I ask this seriously) our minds are the surroundings? Happiness is a wondrous achievement that seeks us. Striving instead for pleasure is the greatest sin against one’s self. How shall I perceive this world? It’s my choice, isn’t it.”
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The Awakening of the Self
The awakening of the self is to a new and more active plane of being; new and more personal relationships with reality; new and more work which it will accomplish. It is the transcendent in the physical plane; the shifting of consciousness from lower to higher levels. This awakening places a person in a higher order of reality, past the instincts of self-preservation. Larger consciousness impresses the individual consciousness and alters the attitude regarding the world and reality. It is a momentous change of tastes regarding life itself.
“You can quite literally measure how well you are doing in your spiritual journey or personal development by focusing on your perception of the world and of others. When our light within grows we stop resonating with the “shadow” parts of the world and actually don’t see things from this perspective any longer.”
Have you ever noticed that happy, peaceful people seem to see a world that is becoming more loving, accepting and open minded? And people who seem to be negative or are always complaining about things seem to be convinced that this world is “going to hell in a handbasket.” Why do you think that is? What many do not realize is that the world is only a reflection of our inner world. The more shadow we have in our emotional and mental body the more shadow we see in the world. You can quite literally measure how well you are doing in your spiritual journey or personal development by focusing on your perception of the world and of others. When our light within grows we stop resonating with the “shadow” parts of the world and actually don’t see things from this perspective any longer. While some may say this is…
“Authentic wisdom is the ability to monitor yourself at all times to determine your relative state of weakness or strength, and to shift out of those thoughts that weaken you.” Wayne Dyer, 10 Secrets for Success and Inner Peace
I was reflecting on authenticity and that as I am out and about or busy with my work that the love that I seek is not really Love… but that it is a state of consciousness in my mind and that it really is based on body sensations and notions, however subtle, that are not true and wholesome like the ideal of love. True love does not come and go and it cannot be found in the world and as I stayed with this, with the stillness, I knew love cannot be found one moment and then lost in another. This presence with Love is timeless, without objects and it might be characterized, although there are no properties in the stillness, I’m saying it is a Self-knowing, Self-recognizing peaceful and serene consciousness of I know this awareness.. a consciousness I recall the experience of as like I’d been in a deep sleep and it is refreshing like a deep object-less sleep.
John Wheeler demonstrated “the universe is a self-referential ‘strange loop’ in which physics gives rise to observers, then rise to information, which in turn gives rise to physics.” What we find here is something quite similar. We’ll discover that mirror relationships create a strange loop as well. An observation changes the perceiving when we focus upon the lessons, changes the information, changes the relationship, changes the information, changes the evolution, changes the observers, changes the physics.
Within, consciousness is fractal-holographic to the exact same awareness and health and state of mind in our every fiber as the mind is aligned. It is as though the past is healed when we heal an emotional wound in the present. THIS IS TRUE: When a pattern occurs in the present and it is healed, the pattern is healed throughout the past… everywhere.
David Bohm’s interpretation of quantum mechanics, overall worldview, and Special Relativity use what he referred to as the holomovement. Holomovement is “undivided wholeness” in process of becoming by “universal flux” not static oneness. By dynamic wholeness-in-motion, everything moves with an interconnectedness as though separared in space and time and yet is always every thing connected with everything else. Bohm expanded his ideas in his book, Wholeness and the Implicate Order, 1980. He included this in Special Relativity afterwards in 1981.
In this note (post), I include a course for you in holo-mirror, holo-movement. This is VERY POWERFUL work as this video demonstrates:
At 13:41 Gregg presents a graphic with a list of the seven mirrors:
1. Mirror of the Moment
2. Mirror of that which is Judged
3. Mirror of that which is Lost/Given Away/Taken Away
4. Mirror of Most Forgotten Love
5. Mirror of Father/Mother
6. Mirror of Your Quest into Darkness
7. Mirror of Self Perception
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— everyone is a mirror —
every important person is an important mirror
— this always applies —
every important person is an important mirror
— everyone is a mirror —
seven mirror patterns
The First Mirror is my presence in the now moment… what we reflect by others in the present… what we radiate in the moment.
The Second Mirror is only very subtlety different but it reflects back to us that which we judge. It is what we have been wounded by and have an emotional charge on. It can be something we have done in the past that we have not forgiven. It is good to discern however that when we condemn another with an emotional charge we are most likely judging ourselves. This mirror is more difficult to understand as most people find it difficult to see the deeply wounded emotions within. We often think we have forgiven people and situations, when in fact they weaved subtlety into the very fabric of our being.
The Third Mirror reflects back to us something we have lost, given away or had taken away. When we see something we love in another it is often something we have lost, given away or that has been stolen within our personal lives. Every relationship is a relationship with the self and often we try to reclaim what we lost, gave away or had taken away as a child. All of which can be reclaimed within self. When we give away our power to another person, we suffer a form of soul loss, without realizing we send out a subtle frequency that others can feel, if they are experiencing the same energy loss, you will attract the same pattern of behavior back to you.
The Fourth Mirror reflects back to us our most forgotten love. This could be a way of life, or a lost or unfinished relationship. Often it is a past life where a wrong conclusion from a prior experience was made. These will recreate themselves over and over and over again until the conclusion is registered in the soul as wisdom. This is the most difficult to come to terms with as we all have made these sort of choices in our life, to leave someone, a place or much loved home, the pain of such a decision will imprint upon the soul or body hologram, once the lesson has been recognized you no longer attract these circumstances to you.
The Fifth Mirror reflects back Father/Mother. It is frequently stated that we marry our father or mother. We may display both healthy and unhealthy patterns we learned as a child. Our father and mother are often like Gods to us and so we will often reflect aspects of our relationship with them onto our partners. We often choose our partners based on our relationship with our parents.
The Sixth Mirror reflects back to us the Quest for Darkness or what is often referred to as a dark night of the soul. This is where we meet our greatest challenges, our greatest fears, and have been gathering the tools from life to confront and deal with. The most important thing to remember is that our soul is giving us the opportunity to grow and evolve, this will help us remove the vibration of victim. If we see these as opportunities for spiritual growth and from a perspective of soul advancement, they do not have to be feared; it is just passing through our life, asking us to seek answers from within rather than relying on others for answers.
The Seventh Mirror reflects back to us our self-perception. Others will perceive and treat us according to how we perceive and treat ourselves. If we are under a low self-esteem and do not accept our wisdom and beauty, others will not acknowledge them. If we are angry, bitter and unloving to others, they in turn will often react in the same way towards us. If we find another perception of ourselves, we alter the world. Maybe it is time to be kind, loving and compassionate with ourselves and others.
Combine mirror work with asking yourself… “Am I playing a role?” If you can recognize that you or the other is playing a role as Victim, Rescuer, or Persecutor, you will be able to accomplish far easier use of the mirror lessons.
This Essene work is tremendously powerful but very subtle.
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Pay close attention to the training.
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The ancient Essene had a very sophisticated understanding of interpersonal human relationships and the role of emotion in those relationships. It’s the role of emotion that we have carefully sifted out of our Western experience up until very recently. Now, as we go back into these texts, we see that it is emotion that proves the power and, when coupled with logic, true magic and miracles occur.
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Qualities that we see in the people around us are directly related to our own traits that attract the mirroring others.
‘Tis the season for some to take offense when a store clerk says “happy holidays” instead of “merry Christmas,” or when a coffee chain converts to plain red cups for the holiday. The “war on Christmas” trope seems to surface with Black Friday sales, but who is actually at war?
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It is easy to imagine saying “merry Christmas” as another cudgel in the culture wars between Christians and the irreligious. The actual story, however, is much more nuanced. Public Religion Research Institute asked a nationally representative sample of Americans whether retailers should greet their customers with “happy holidays” or “season’s greetings” — rather than “merry Christmas” — “out of respect for people of different faiths.” Although a slim majority of those with a preference want retailers to say “happy holidays” or “season’s greetings,” we found that preference depends on your level of tension with the culture where you live. To explore these cultural tensions, we analyzed the PRRI data jointly with the 2010 Religion Census results.
According to the findings, evangelicals, on average, strongly favor “merry Christmas” and seculars prefer “happy holidays” or “season’s greetings.” But the war on Christmas is not simply a religious divide. One of the more surprising findings is that the Bible-Belt South does not show the weakest preference for “happy holidays” (54 percent). That distinction belongs to the Midwest (44 percent). One reason for the difference is African-Americans (20 percent of the South in this sample), who strongly prefer “happy holidays” despite their high levels of religiosity.
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Preferences, not surprisingly, are filtered through a political lens, with Republicans opposing “happy holidays” at the strongest rates and most consistently across the nation. Republican responses probably reflect opposition to political correctness as much as (and perhaps more so than) spiritual sympathies. Republicans as a whole (30 percent) outpace even evangelical Republicans (38 percent) in their anemic support for saying “happy holidays.”1
Since Christmas is such a public holiday — people put out displays and pass out cookies, and they feel compelled to wish people some version of merriment — it is no surprise that reactions to it vary across communities. Non-Christians and the nonreligious in states with large white Christian populations are the most likely groups to urge stores to adopt a “happy holidays” regimen. Support for “happy holidays,” however, drops dramatically for secular citizens in largely nonreligious states like Oregon. In these areas, the social stakes are low — Christmas is not an entre to conversations about what church you attend, but more about presents, ugly sweaters and Santa. In such nonreligious states, secular’ support for “happy holidays” is the same as it is among evangelicals nationwide (48 percent).
The next time you hear or read a media dispatch about the war on Christmas, such as Texas Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller’s threat to slap the next person who says “happy holidays” to him, realize that it does not reflect a national war but rather local skirmishes. There is no orchestrated war against saying “merry Christmas,” but it is important to recognize that Christmas can be a potent symbol that reflects inter-group tensions and signals exclusion to some Americans.
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Footnotes
As we argued in a recent piece, Republicanism also appears to trump religion when it comes to anti-Muslim views.
Lord, make me an instrument of Thy peace; Where there is hatred, let me sow love; Where there is injury, pardon; Where there is error, the truth; Where there is doubt, the faith; Where there is despair, hope; Where there is darkness, light; And where there is sadness, joy.
O Divine Master, Grant that I may not so much seek To be consoled, as to console; To be understood, as to understand; To be loved as to love.
For it is in giving that we receive; It is in pardoning that we are pardoned; And it is in dying that we are born to eternal life. Amen.
Social laughter is correlated with an elevated pain threshold Laughter Produces Endorphins,
Study Finds:
“Laughter is very weird stuff, actually,” Dr. Dunbar said. “That’s why we got interested in it.” The simple muscular exertions involved in producing the familiar ha, ha, ha, trigger an increase in endorphins. Laughter contributes to group bonding and may have been important in the evolution of highly social humans. .
In five sets of studies in the laboratory and one field study at comedy performances, Dr. Dunbar and colleagues tested resistance to pain both before and after bouts of social laughter. See: Social laughter is correlated with an elevated pain threshold
I connected with more than 1600 friends at Facebook during this past year and my work consumes most of my online time. I hope you will drop on by my FB page if you’d like… really.
This is my third year beginning at WordPress. To tell you in one sentence what I’ve learned in these past two years at WordPress, I’ll put it this way:
All of creation is to comprehend together that reality is the experience of expanding kindness.
There is no other need for time. We are not humans, planets and stars blowing on a solar wind. We are mind. We are with all that is when we are with being in God’s will. True mind is in His love. This is what is important.
The truth is in our kindness.
I’ve known no greater kindness than contemplating a sense of love with Almighty God.
I’ll share with you a kindness today is that I am worthy of love. You are the worth of my love. My challenge today is to understand that. I pray that God will expand in me today, absolute awareness; His love of you in Him.
I was wondering what I’d most love to share as a kickoff into my third year here. I settled on one of my favorite subjects. I’ve always wanted Einstein to be fun at least and maybe even easy-peezy to understand. So, here is my conclusion for today’s contribution. I hope that this is easy as 15 minutes of your time and as wonderful as a visit with your friend may be.
Enjoy:
Einstein’s Relativity: Time Dilation
Einstein: “Any person moving at a constant velocity will observe the same laws of physics that a stationary person observes.”
Since the speed of light is part of the laws of physics, Einstein postulated that all observers will measure the same speed of light regardless of their state of motion. But speed is just a measure of distance moved in a given time and in order to agree on the speed of light different observers might have to disagree about distance and time.
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… In 1915 Albert Einstein formulated the theory of general relativity which fundamentally changed our understanding of gravity. He explained gravity as the manifestation of the curvature of space and time. Einstein’s theory predicts that the flow of time is altered by mass. This effect, known as “gravitational time dilation”, causes time to be slowed down near a massive object. It affects everything and everybody; in fact, people working on the ground floor will age slower than their colleagues a floor above, by about 10 nanoseconds in one year. This tiny effect has actually been confirmed in many experiments with very precise clocks. Now, a team of researchers from the University of Vienna, Harvard University and the University of Queensland have discovered that the slowing down of time can explain another perplexing phenomenon: the transition from quantum behavior to our classical, everyday world.
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The first thing that I felt when I sat back today to begin here was that I’ve missed you all for most of this year while I was working over at my Facebook page. I don’t use WordPress the same way that I’d begun here. This is now a place for pages that I want to feature and not a place where I post a daily update.
I connected with more than 1500 friends at Facebook during this past year and my work consumes most of my online time. I hope you will drop on by my FB page if you’d like… really.
Leo Tolstoy wrote a story, The Three Hermits. His friend Nicholas Roerich summarized the tale:
On an island there lived three old hermits. They were so simple that the only prayer they used was: “We are three; Thou art Three have mercy on us!”
Great miracles were manifested during this naive prayer.
A local bishop came to hear about the three hermits and their prayer, and he decided to visit them to teach them the canonical invocations. He arrived on the island, told the hermits that their heavenly petition was undignified, and taught them many of the customary prayers. The bishop then left on a boat. He saw, following the ship, a radiant light. As it approached, he discerned the three hermits, who were holding hands and running upon the waves in an effort to overtake the vessel.
“We have forgotten the prayers you taught us,” they cried as they reached the bishop, “and have hastened to ask you to repeat them.”
The awed bishop shook his head.
“Dear ones,” he replied humbly, “continue to live with your old prayer!”
I was in peace with gentle knowing of a lovely vision this morning. I did watch this sky. In it a man about my age met me and we took a stairway. He told me of a dimensional mirror. He showed this to me. I saw the stillness of light and the universe in a single point. I saw this all reflect into the now. This was so lovely that all fear subsided. I was for that moment now-ness.
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Are mirrors portals to other dimensions?
When mirrors face each other, there is a tunnel of light. Nothing moves. Its just so easy. Being there was everywhere. There is no movement in the stillness and yet all potentiality may emerge here from unconditional love into perfection of a point. This repeats in light; waves of light reflect electromagnetically each choice form.
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Light does not travel. Within the cubes shown in this video, there appears an endless radial universe that doesn’t exist. In reality, there are only 6 mirrors and an empty cube. This is how our universe works. The omnipresent light is repeated wave field to wave field. All lights give to all other lights. All is truly one expressing itself in infinite diversity.
Verbal and emotional abuse… is more than just words said. It’s the attitude with it… with underlying anger we dread. For though no bruises are seen… and no cuts are evident… it’s underlying damage to souls… is why it’s so relevant.
We must step outside the disempowering trance of childhood programming and recover our innate powers of creation! Currently we are dedicating our efforts to informing the public about the empowering process of conscious parenting, a developmental head start that offers children an opportunity to experience enlightened, healthy and loving lives. Who is with us?!
For you are the cultural creatives who are taking responsibility for your lives, and by doing so, helping us to evolve. Thank you for thinking “outside” the box, for that is where the answers are to be found!
New Year’s Resolutions Being LOVE sending LOVE as best we are able…
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I always make a set of resolutions for a new year and I always keep them… I am quite sensitive to being sure that I can keep my resolutions by making progress, not by perfection. One part of my resolutions this year is to make better use of social media. I want to continue my personal growth and use what I discovered in these past years as a blogger as good experience for my own personal growth. I’ve learned a lot about myself through blogging. I use what is best for me and I move on in growth to process what you guys say I can do to improve me. I post what I discover and it may therefore be helpful to you. We need each other. [Note: I use Facebook more so also now because I am making faster progress there.]
In past years, going back to the first time I used social media to help me at making a resolution, I set out for a year to eliminate regrets; well, more specifically, to rid myself of discontented futile regrets… having no regrets seemed far too difficult. So, I set myself out to dismantle the regrets of my past. I hope to write about eliminating futile regrets in the future. It was quite a useful and positive resolution for me.
This morning, I read advice posted via Doug Christman. The blog post included a quotation that I loved.
“The fact is that those who do not see themselves but who see others, who fail to grasp of themselves but who grasp others, take possession of what others have but fail to possess themselves.”
~ Chuang Tzu
The blog post is linked below. I like the advice in this post as well. The advice relates to using social media and to self-discovery. I want to add some commentary. My hope is that I will complete my own making of yet another perfect resolution (for me) in time for 2015. I’m getting closer. . Here is some of what I think that the article may do for improving upon a solution. The post makes reference to social media as though using social media is a problem. Possibly it is a symptom of suffering. However, I think using social media is for me a tremendous blessing. Also, the post addresses suffering from relating with others – what I call ‘over relating’ with others.
First, problems themselves are not the source of suffering from over relating with others. Lack of a cohesive spiritual evolve-ment is the problem of mental suffering – over relating with others is a symptom. Using social media as an escape for interpersonal relating in the real world certainly is not solution. The suffering in the real world continues or changes but continues and it is likely to somehow also inject its pain into our social media use.
We tend to want to control others rather than our own reactions – however, relating requires giving of consideration and being understanding. Listing a set of prescriptive resolutions that are reactive isn’t a solution. We’d end up with New Year resolutions that crumble and fail in the first hours of 2015 if there isn’t a spiritual solution in the lessons. I’ll stick for this post to the advice as was listed in the blog post.
1. Spend less time on social media and get back to real life. This is probably not a solution for anyone that is feeling a lack of self-esteem and general good feeling about themselves. Instead, use daily interactions to improve relationships. The situations that cause upsets or low energy are symptoms of suffering that may be going unnoticed if we’d not have a reason for using our time more wisely. Perhaps use social media less. However, making use of social media to accomplish goals and to connect with experts and to learn about self-awareness is a better use of social media.
2. Stop worrying about how other people view you. Good advice! People that cook up dramatic representations – of their victim stories – of pain and suffering – of what (they say) is being done to them – believe they have a need to vent or get justice or to change the other guys. Meantime it may go unnoticed internally… they are the source of their own discontent… of their own irritability… and of their own restless complaining. They need help; and yet, they don’t know how to seek and receive the help that they desperately need. Getting in a mentoring program and recovery from processing themselves as the abused victim is a step into personal freedom from worrying about how others may be understood. Seek to understand more so than to be understood… find mentors that understand how this works.
3. Stop listening to other people’s views and advice on what you ought to be doing. I like the advice: “Just listen to your own inner voice and intuition.” However, we are not the masters of the universe. The advice included, as well, “Use your own divine “Global Positioning System (GPS)” for where you need to be and what you need to be doing. You will find that you will feel so much more connected and you will embrace your life with a positive and optimistic perspective.” I’ll add that if advice is a source for suffering, then perhaps the suffering really is internally generated by rebelliousness and instincts that are over working and undermining the relationships.
I like the fourth one, as is.
In fact, it really may be the key point of blog posted list.
4. Focus on your own goals, desires and wishes. Consider what you’re doing or what you should be doing, and then do that. Don’t worry about what other people are doing. Mind your own business. You need to stay focused and always know what is worth keeping in your mental toolbox and what would be worth pitching. Ask your Higher Self for guidance. Spend your time thinking and doing things that are helping you be happy, healthy and in harmony with your true authentic self.
Do you make New Year resolutions? Are they helpful and doable? What might you add to this topic on resolutions?
.
Here is another source that I looked at;
helping me as I set out this year-end
to make a New Year’s resolution:
This Saturday morning (1/3/2015), I will be joining a mentoring the mentor group. It was my desire to form one this year and I was unable to do so. However, last week, a mentor asked me to mentor him and I felt inspired to ask him if we could do our work together with another mentor associate of our mutual acquaintance. He agreed and so did the other man… and so, it got set into motion. I am very happy about this development. I know we will all reap benefits from this work with each other.
My blogging here on WordPress is much less since August. In 2015, I probably will post here only 3-7 times each month and additionally, I will continue to also reblog posts that I love. My contact page is the best source for getting in touch with me if we haven’t already created a way that works for doing this..
Eric
a legal system, it’s a social system, it’s a system of etiquette, and it includes everything. It includes housing, it includes food, it includes art. The Hindus and many other ancient peoples do not make, as we do, a division between religion and everything else. 
Eric
There is no other need for time. We are not humans, planets and stars blowing on a solar wind. We are mind. We are with all that is when we are with being in God’s will. True mind is in His love. This is what is important. 
the Hunt for Truth 