“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.
Man cannot stand a meaningless life Carl Gustav Jung and John Freeman BBC’s Face to Face
Echoing Anaïs Nin’s meditation on the fluid self from a decade earlier, Jung confirms that fixed personality is a myth.
Legendary Swiss psychiatrist Carl Gustav Jung (July 26, 1875 – June 6, 1961), along with his frenemy Freud, is considered the founding father of modern analytical psychology. He coined the concepts of collective consciousness and introverted vs. extroverted personality, providing the foundation for the popular Myers-Briggs Type Indicator. Though famously accused of having lost his soul, Jung had a much more heartening view of human nature than Freud and memorably wrote that “the sole purpose of human existence is to kindle a light in the darkness of mere being.”
On October 22 of 1959, BBC’s Face to Face — an unusual series of pointed, almost interrogative interviews seeking to “unmask public figures” — aired a segment on Jung, included in the 1977 anthology C.G. Jung Speaking: Interviews and Encounters (public library). Eighty-four at the time and still working, he talks to New Statesman editor John Freeman about education, religion, consciousness, human nature, and his temperamental differences with Freud, which sparked his study of personality types.
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Jung speaks with Freeman on a range of subjects, from his childhood and education to his association with Sigmund Freud and his views on death, religion and the future of the human race. At one point Freeman asks Jung whether he believes in God, and Jung seems to hesitate. “It’s difficult to answer,” he says.
“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.
Marianne Williamson dives into some of the world’s greatest challenges and the concept of how our global society is experiencing a global mutation. The points she makes will motivate you to think of what we can do—and think—as a collective unit, to overcome society’s challenges, heal our spiritual malignancies, and thrive through this global shift.
Epigenetics is a foundational Frontier Science for Positive Human Evolution.
The Biology of Belief is a groundbreaking work in the field of new biology. Theories of evolution and genetics have long taught that genetic mutation is entirely beyond our control. However, genetics has been gradually discovering that we may establish that some self-directed biological transformations occur.
Scientific evidence clearly is demonstrating that emotions effect health, job performance, relationships and much more. You are what you feel and think.
Author Dr. Bruce H. Lipton is a former medical school professor and research scientist. His experiments, and those of other leading-edge scientists, have examined in great detail the mechanisms by which cells receive and process information. The implications of this research radically change our understanding of life. It shows that genes and DNA do not control our biology; that instead DNA is controlled by signals from outside the cell, including the energetic feeling messages emanating from our positive and negative thoughts. Dr. Liptons’s profoundly hopeful synthesis of the latest and best research in cell biology and quantum physics is being hailed as a major breakthrough, showing that our bodies can be changed as we retrain our thinking.
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Program Description Through the research of Dr Lipton and other leading-edge scientists, stunning new discoveries have been made about the interaction between your mind and body and the processes by which cells receive information. It shows that genes and DNA do not control our biology, that instead DNA is controlled by signals from outside the cell, including the energetic messages emanating from our thoughts. Using simple language, illustrations, humor, and everyday examples, he demonstrates how the new science of Epigenetics is revolutionizing our understanding of the link between mind and matter and the profound effects it has on our personal lives and the collective life of our species. This paperback edition of The Biology of Belief fully updates and revises the material from the bestselling original edition, and adds material in the light of the seismic effect the book has had.
The practice of living consciously is the first pillar of self-esteem.
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Look at the area where your life is working least satisfactorily. Self-esteem may increase in direct correlation to professionalism. That is, your ability to represent yourself appropriately, perform on the job and be a person with whom others can relate, is an indication of success in whatever you choose to do.
Upon honest self-examination, notice that you tend to be more conscious in some areas of our life than in others. According to Nathaniel Brandon, author of The Six Pillars of Self-Esteem, “What determines the level of self-esteem is what the individual does.”
Branden continues by saying: “A ‘practice’ implies a discipline of acting in a certain way over and over again—consistently. It is not action by fits and starts, or even an appropriate response to a crisis. Rather, it is a way of operating day by day, in big issues and small, a way of behaving that is also a way of being.”
For improving self, try using a sentence stem like “Living consciously to me means…” and create 6-10 completions of that sentence.
The most widely accepted definition is that ofNathaniel Branden, who defines healthy self-esteem as “the disposition to experience oneself as competent to cope with life’s challenges and being worthy of happiness.” (1994) This definition implies not only being worthy of respect, but also as having the basic skills and competencies required to be successful in life. Studies show that people with low self-esteem have more poorly defined self-concepts (Baumeister, 1993). Also, we must like, respect, and love ourselves before we can maintain loving kindness for others or respect for property.
1. The Practice of Living Consciously 2. The Practice of Self-Acceptance 3. The Practice of Self-Responsibility 4. The Practice of Self-Assertiveness 5. The Practice of Living Purposefully 6. The Practice of Personal Integrity
1. The Practice of Living Consciously 2. The Practice of Self-Acceptance 3. The Practice of Self-Responsibility 4. The Practice of Self-Assertiveness 5. The Practice of Living Purposefully 6. The Practice of Personal Integrity
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Branden introduces the six pillars — six action-based practices for daily living — providing a foundation for self-esteem and explores the central importance of self-esteem in the five areas of the workplace, parenting, education, psychotherapy, and the culture at large.
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No one may be successful if bypassing their basic needs for self-esteem. The ego is not a thing to fight against. It is not even available for debate. The ego is a sense of needs that we may mistakenly believe is the self. However, by opening to greater self-awareness, we come to understand that the ego is just a function of temporary needs messages. I hope that this program and the related links are helpful. I know I attain growth by reviewing of these basic life skills.
So, does nature influence how we think? According to recent research out of the Victoria University of Wellington in New Zealand, connectedness with nature may influence cognitive styles. The research team, led by Carmen Lai Yin Leong, conducted two studies with Singaporean secondary students as participants. In the first study, Leong and her team examined how connectedness with nature correlated with innovative and holistic cognitive styles. The second study explored connectedness with nature and its potential to predict cognitive styles.
The first study consisted of 138 adolescents (46 percent female) with an average age of 15 years. Participants completed an online survey consisting of questionnaires that measured connectedness to nature, nature relatedness, analytic versus holistic thinking preference, and creative style (innovative or adaptive). The results showed statistically significant correlations between connectedness with nature and innovative and holistic thinking. Innovative thinkers are open-minded, whereas, adaptive thinkers, at the opposite end…
Krishnamurti claimed allegiance to no nationality, caste, religion, or philosophy. He spent most of his life travelling the world, speaking to large and small groups and individuals… more
Freedom from the Known
TRANSCRIPT
Pursuit of Pleasure Jiddu Krishnamurti
We said in the last chapter that joy was something entirely different from pleasure, so let us find out what is involved in pleasure and whether it is at all possible to live in a world that does not contain pleasure but a tremendous sense of joy, of bliss.
We are all engaged in the pursuit of pleasure in some form or other – intellectual, sensuous or cultural pleasure, the pleasure of reforming, telling others what to do, of modifying the evils of society, of doing good – the pleasure of greater knowledge, greater physical satisfaction, greater experience, greater understanding of life, all the clever, cunning things of the mind – and the ultimate pleasure is, of course, to have God.
Pleasure is the structure of society. From childhood until death we are secretly, cunningly or obviously pursuing pleasure. So whatever our form of pleasure is, I think we should be very clear about it because it is going to guide and shape our lives. It is therefore important for each one of us to investigate closely, hesitantly and delicately this question of pleasure, for to find pleasure, and then nourish and sustain it, is a basic demand of life and without it existence becomes dull, stupid, lonely and meaningless.
You may ask why then should life not be guided by pleasure? For the very simple reason that pleasure must bring pain, frustration, sorrow and fear, and, out of fear, violence. If you want to live that way, live that way. Most of the world does, anyway, but if you want to be free from sorrow you must understand the whole structure of pleasure
To understand pleasure is not to deny it. We are not condemning it or saying it is right or wrong, but if we pursue it, let us do so with our eyes open, knowing that a mind that is all the time seeking pleasure must inevitably find its shadow, pain. They cannot be separated, although we run after pleasure and try to avoid pain.
Now, why is the mind always demanding pleasure? Why is it that we do noble and ignoble things with the undercurrent of pleasure? Why is it we sacrifice and suffer on the thin thread of pleasure? What is pleasure and how does it come into being? I wonder if any of you have asked yourself these questions and followed the answers to the very end?
Pleasure comes into being through four stages – perception, sensation, contact and desire. I see a beautiful motor car, say; then I get a sensation, a reaction, from looking at it; then I touch it or imagine touching it, and then there is the desire to own and show myself off in it. Or I see a lovely cloud, or a mountain clear against the sky, or a leaf that has just come in springtime, or a deep valley full of loveliness and splendour, or a glorious sunset, or a beautiful face, intelligent, alive, not self-conscious and therefore no longer beautiful. I look at these things with intense delight and as I observe them there is no observer but only sheer beauty like love. For a moment I am absent with all my problems, anxieties and miseries – there is only that marvellous thing. I can look at it with joy and the next moment forget it, or else the mind steps in, and then the problem begins; my mind thinks over what it has seen and thinks how beautiful it was; I tell myself I should like to see it again many times. Thought begins to compare, judge, and say `l must have it again tomorrow’. The continuity of an experience that has given delight for a second is sustained by thought.
It is the same with sexual desire or any other form of desire. There is nothing wrong with desire. To react is perfectly normal. If you stick a pin in me I shall react unless I am paralysed. But then thought steps in and chews over the delight and turns it into pleasure. Thought wants to repeat the experience, and the more you repeat, the more mechanical it becomes; the more you think about it, the more strength thought gives to pleasure. So thought creates and sustains pleasure through desire, and gives it continuity, and therefore the natural reaction of desire to any beautiful thing is perverted by thought. Thought turns it into a memory and memory is then nourished by thinking about it over and over again.
Of course, memory has a place at a certain level. In everyday life we could not function at all without it. In its own field it must be efficient but there is a state of mind where it has very little place. A mind which is not crippled by memory has real freedom.
Have you ever noticed that when you respond to something totally, with all your heart, there is very little memory? It is only when you do not respond to a challenge with your whole being that there is a conflict, a struggle, and this brings confusion and pleasure or pain. And the struggle breeds memory. That memory is added to all the time by other memories and it is those memories which respond. Anything that is the result of memory is old and therefore never free. There is no such thing as freedom of thought. It is sheer nonsense.
Thought is never new, for thought is the response of memory, experience, knowledge. Thought, because it is old, makes this thing which you have looked at with delight and felt tremendously for the moment, old. From the old you derive pleasure, never from the new. There is no time in the new.
So if you can look at all things without allowing pleasure to creep in – at a face, a bird, the colour of a sari, the beauty of a sheet of water shimmering in the sun, or anything that gives delight – if you can look at it without wanting the experience to be repeated, then there will be no pain, no fear, and therefore tremendous joy.
It is the struggle to repeat and perpetuate pleasure which turns it into pain. Watch it in yourself. The very demand for the repetition of pleasure brings about pain, because it is not the same, as it was yesterday. You struggle to achieve the same delight, not only to your aesthetic sense but the same inward quality of the mind, and you are hurt and disappointed because it is denied to you.
Have you observed what happens to you when you are denied a little pleasure? When you don’t get what you want you become anxious, envious, hateful. Have you noticed when you have been denied the pleasure of drinking or smoking or sex or whatever it is – have you noticed what battles you go through? And all that is a form of fear, isn’t it? You are afraid of not getting what you want or of losing what you have. When some particular faith or ideology which you have held for years is shaken or torn away from you by logic or life, aren’t you afraid of standing alone? That belief has for years given you satisfaction and pleasure, and when it is taken away you are left stranded, empty, and the fear remains until you find another form of pleasure, another belief.
It seems to me so simple and because it is so simple we refuse to see its simplicity. We like to complicate everything. When your wife turns away from you, aren’t you jealous? Aren’t you angry? Don’t you hate the man who has attracted her? And what is all that but fear of losing something which has given you a great deal of pleasure, a companionship, a certain quality of assurance and the satisfaction of possession?
So if you understand that where there is a search for pleasure there must be pain, live that way if you want to, but don’t just slip into it. If you want to end pleasure, though, which is to end pain, you must be totally attentive to the whole structure of pleasure – not cut it out as monks and sannyasis do, never looking at a woman because they think it is a sin and thereby destroying the vitality of their understanding – but seeing the whole meaning and significance of pleasure. Then you will have tremendous joy in life. You cannot think about joy. Joy is an immediate thing and by thinking about it, you turn it into pleasure. Living in the present is the instant perception of beauty and the great delight in it without seeking pleasure from it.
How may we overcome the illusion of separateness
from each other
from “other countries”
from the universe?
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Take a few deep breaths… and be of good cheer.
Spontaneous Evolution Our Fractal Nature
Separateness from God-source is on our cells credit: Bruce H. Lipton, Ph.D.
Although fractal geometry was theorized at the beginning of the 20th century, it was not until the development of the super computer that we have been able to see the full implications of fractals. Bruce Lipton, cellular biologist, explains here, our fractal nature of the universe and how it applies to our biology… mutations are not mistakes and the evolution is not entirely random. Mutation comes about by changes — by choices made at the cellular level. Lipton explains that because of fractal geometry, we can see that the evolution of humanity is a fractal projection that is tied directly into the evolution of the earth, and the universe.
I watched cichlid family fish evolution in a documentary and the process is explored and reported in many places including here and here. The cichlid caught by scientists in the act of splitting into two distinct species were in Lake Victoria.
In this video, Lipton explains how each cell has a backbone and the shape is determined by the distribution of positive and negative charges. Proteins can move by changing the charges. They respond to signals from the environment such as energy fields that cause constructive or destructive interference. Such signals cause the backbone to change. A specific stimulus binds to the cell membrane at a specific receptor. When the right signal is present, they work. When the wrong signal is present, they might not work or they might move away. The skin of the cell is the brain of the cell or the mem-brane.
The skin, membrane, is two rows of molecules, mirror image to each other — crystal, but movable. The outside, polar heads are water loving, and the interior, the legs are oil loving lipids. Much like a butter sandwich; neither water nor oil objects would easily move through. However, the membrane also has integral membrane proteins. These proteins have antennae which are tuned to specific items. These proteins are able to perceive and respond to changes in their environment, similar to how we perceive environmental change and then adjust.
The work that Lipton is promoting here, in the video (don’t go by what I write please) is revealing even of how we, as humans may be separate from our source — following from our cellular disconnection right through into any conscious thoughts — it being then necessary to consciously direct the body to be mindful of divinity — or surely we may forget this importance. The receptors on each and every cell that make us individuals are what maintain us separate from our source. Thus, the ancient wisdom that teaches that we must look inward for the stillness of source rather than draw upon experiences and previous perceptions is quite wise – isn’t it… so, as it turns out, biology is poised to discover that each and every cell membrane is what is preventing us from direct contact with the origin of true-self. The dream of separate reality continues in the meantime. Now, you probably know, I am always right back to my central theme of this blog – inner peace, stillness and serenity through ceaseless prayer and meditation is key to living more and more completely God’s will and to accepting the grace of God that is always available.
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The video was originally released in eight parts, here is the entire talk:
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A premise that genetic mutations are random is an error. Darwin’s idea that nature selects the strongest does not hold true. Mutations usually detract from the viability of an organism. Nature eliminates the weakest mutations and doesn’t really care about the strongest. Genetic determinism went in the wrong direction. Our health is determined by perceptions, not by genetics. In the ground breaking work introduced here, Dr. Lipton demonstrated that a cell is able to perceive and respond to perceptions at its level — individually, each cell morphing in time according to its perceptions.
Hillman sees soul itself as a perspective, the means by which we become aware of not only that which is above but that which lies beneath us, unseen, the invisible roots that provide stability as well as nourishment.
Souls can be, among other things, lost, saved, non-existent, or hearty, but do we make soul? If so, what does that mean? What then, is soul?
Perhaps as it should be, I have puzzled for years at James Hillman’s use of the term “soul-making.” Now days, ideas about soul are sometimes dismissed as archaic. So if we are to understand a term like soul-making, shall we not first consider what the word soul itself might mean?
Wiki describes soul as the incorporeal or immortal essence of one’s being. In animism, soul not only belongs to biological forms of life, but to inanimate (according to some western minds anyway) things of nature; rocks, rivers, mountains, trees, etc.
In English, the word soul may have roots meaning to bind, referring back to a time when the binding of the dead was done in order that their ghost would not return to haunt the living. It is also related to words like anima and…
Program Description “I believe she is a saint who walks among us” (Wayne Dyer on Immaculée Ilibagiza). Immaculée is a Rwandan author and motivational speaker. She is also a Roman Catholic and Tutsi. Her first book, Left to Tell: Discovering God Amidst the Rwandan Holocaust (2006), is an autobiographical work detailing how she survived during the Rwandan Genocide. Excerpt from Wayne Dyers program “Inspiration – Your Ultimate Calling”
Intimacy With God/Knowing God. The New Birth. The Kingdom Of God. These three topics will be addressed as we discuss the aspects of our achieving intimacy with God.
John 17:3, New American Standard Bible (NASB)
3 This is eternal life, that they may know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom You have sent.
The aspect of knowing God is essential to the salvation of all human beings. It is not, merely, an awareness of Jesus, but a relationship that is described as being as close and personal as the physical relationship between a man and his wife. Strong’s reference number 1097 of the New Testament (Know) is directly related to the Old Testament reference number of 3045, in Genesis 4:1, in which Adam’s knowing Eve refers to his direct contact with her, in a sexual relationship. The 1097 reference also applies…
“Love never claims it always gives; love never suffers, never resents, and never revenges itself. Where there is love there is life; hatred leads to destruction.”
~ Mahatma Gandhi
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You will probably enjoy this:
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PROGRAM DESCRIPTION
Christie Marie Sheldon moves energy. Energy healer and author of Love or Above, she just breathes a kind of talent we may only wish we had. Christie was born with the gift of seeing your energy vibrations. She’ll tell you in an instant what’s standing between your goals and dreams. At last year’s Awesomeness Fest, Christie shared the realities which creates our blocks and taught us how to overcome it. So if you’re ready to unlock your truest potential, check this insightful video out. To get know more about Christie Marie Sheldon, visit:http://www.loveorabove.com
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A few of you noticed that I haven’t written as much of my own experiences lately. This is true, yet, really I have been posting the expert knowledge upon which I am building a new me. The emerging me is growing in love that is from that that already knows anything and everything; from the absolute knowledge that is within and yet beyond the beginning and end of space-time.
There was a tremendous difficulty built into my younger years and perhaps from before too that blocked me from fully being love. I am doing my best to remove this energy — to move past my misguided identity that believed in a vengeful God. I accept loving God. I am growing from accepting of who I really am; in relationship to the universe, and accessing personal spiritual connectivity.
I am thankful to recall “I am a spiritual being first. The Holy Spirit is the truth of spirituality.” This, I notice, is actually knowledge that grows from within. This is knowledge of being love. The coming of new cells and tissue and mind of love is growing in me. So, really, if you’ve been following my blog, you’ve been reading a log about the me in the making. This, I understand, is good blogging.
Gerry Spence: “I would rather have a mind opened by wonder
than one closed by belief.“
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Being open-minded can be really tough sometimes. Most of us are brought up with a set of beliefs and values and, throughout our lives, tend to surround ourselves with people who share the same values and beliefs. Therefore, it can be difficult when we’re faced with ideas that challenge our own and, though we may wish to be open-minded, we may struggle with the act of it from time to time.
I’d like to say I’m a fairly open-minded person, but, like most people, I do have some pretty strong views about specific topics and find it hard to sway from those opinions — no matter how others might try to persuade me. Of course, I fully believe that having strong beliefs can be a wonderful thing and I believe we should all stay true to what we believe in, but having strong beliefs doesn’t have to mean having a closed mind.
Though it can be tough to do sometimes, I’ve always found that when I open my mind, I’ve reaped a lot of rewarding benefits. There is much to be gained from opening the door to your mind and letting new ideas and beliefs come in. Here are just a few of the benefits I’ve uncovered when I’ve taken the time to view the world around me with an open mind…
The 7 Benefits of Being Open-Minded
Letting go of control. When you open your mind, you free yourself from having to be in complete control of your thoughts. You allow yourself to experience new ideas and thoughts and you challenge the beliefs you currently have. It can be very liberating to look at the world through an open mind. Experiencing changes. Opening up your mind to new ideas allows you to the opportunity to change what you think and how you view the world. Now, this doesn’t mean you necessarily will change your beliefs, but you have the option to when you think with an open mind. Making yourself vulnerable. One of the scariest (and greatest) things about seeing the world through an open mind is making yourself vulnerable. In agreeing to have an open-minded view of the world, you’re admitting you don’t know everything and that there are possibilities you may not have considered. This vulnerability can be both terrifying and exhilarating. Making mistakes. Making mistakes doesn’t seem like it would be much of a benefit, but it truly is. When you open your mind and allow yourself to see things from others’ perspectives, you allow yourself not only to recognize potential mistakes you’ve made, but also to make new mistakes. Doesn’t sound like much fun, but it’s a great thing to fall and get back up again. Strengthening yourself. Open-mindedness provides a platform on which you can build, piling one idea on top of another. With an open mind you can learn about new things and you can use the new ideas to build on the old ideas. Everything you experience can add up, strengthening who you are and what you believe in. It’s very hard to build on experiences without an open mind. Gaining confidence. When you live with an open mind, you have a strong sense of self. You are not confined by your own beliefs, nor are you confined by the beliefs of others. For that reason, you are able to have and gain confidence as you learn more and more about the world around you. Open-mindedness helps you to learn and grow, strengthening your belief in yourself. Being honest. There is an honesty that comes with an open mind because being open-minded means admitting that you aren’t all-knowing. It means believing that whatever truth you find might always have more to it than you realize. This understanding creates an underlying sense of honesty that permeates the character of anyone who lives with an open mind.
For some, being open-minded is easy; it comes as effortlessly as breathing. For others, having an open mind can be more of a challenge, something that they have to work on and make an effort to obtain. Whether or not you consider yourself to be open-minded, you can certainly see from the list above that there are great benefits to viewing life with an open mind. It’s not always an easy thing to do (believe me, most people struggle with this), but the effort to think openly and embrace new ideas will be worth it when you’re able to take part in the benefits that come from opening your mind.
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Do you strive to be open-minded? What additional benefits have you found from opening your mind to new ideas?
Wondering how you can stay positive and present on a daily basis? Check out, Stay Positive: Daily Reminders from Positively Present, filled with daily tips, advice, and inspiration for making the most of every day. Stay Positive is available in Paperback and PDF. Learn more about the book (and watch the video!) at StayPositive365.com.
I’ll begin with a short story that Eckhart Tolle likes to tell:
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Two Zen monks, Tanzan and Ekido, were walking along a country road that had become extremely wet with mud and deep puddles after heavy rains. .
Near a village, they came upon a girl who was trying to cross the road, but the mud was so deep. it would have ruined the silk kimono she was wearing. Tanzan at once picked her up and carried her to the other side. .
The monks walked on in silence. Five hours later, as they were approaching the lodging temple, Ekido couldn’t restrain himself any longer. He finally snapped, “Tanzan, why did you carry that girl across the road? We monks are not supposed to hold girls like that.” .
“I put the girl down hours ago,” said Tanzan. “Are you still carrying her Ekido?” . .
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Sometime I just go with what the expert says. In this case, I have a few clarifying paragraphs.
The story that Tolle relates is used to illustrate a point that we have a vulnerability protection system. He calls it the ego.
I just want to clarify what happened (in this story).
First, the mind is not who we/you are. However, the body believes whatever thoughts that mind allows. Thus as the information is processed in the body, it actually changes subtly the body; the brain and molecules, etc… we know there are chemicals and brain waves and signals being transmitted throughout the brain-heart-gut-body (form, aka. mind-body, un-awakened consciousness). The information, together with form, is ever changing. Thinking, therefore, requiring time, occurs in form (as interpretations of information / consciousness) … not in a/the single unchanging mind (divine mind).
This is confusing and difficult when there is an upset.
In the story, Ekido believes that Tanzan did wrong by carrying the girl. The monks have been walking for a long time when Ekido finally tires of his burden. Ekido has been carrying his belief of the wrongness for hours. He’s been feeling upset. Finally, he relieves himself of this upset by confronting Tanzan rather than himself. He might have said right away to Tanzan, “I got uncomfortable with what happened. What is bothering me is my thinking that it was wrong. We are not supposed to hold women. Still, no harm came of it. She clearly needed some help. I ought to get over this.”
Instead, Ekido allows the disturbance to grow into greater discomfort. He begins to believe that Tanzan is the cause of his discomfort.
Negative thinking about it may have seemed to be the best thing. However, negativity attracts more negativity and the mind then is left feeling badly and having a pressing urge to find some relief. Typically, a person acts out when under this sort of pressure. If there is someone else that can be blamed, that seems the right thing then to do. The upset gets taken over by the body’s pain management system — the source of the pain being out there, Ekido accuses his friend of doing a wrong.
Ekido unknowingly was maintaining a separation from the present moment while he was feeling disturbed. This gets tiring. The disturbance feeds into a delusion that Tanzan is responsible for the upset. His mind is unable to break free of the discomfort while ruminating about the past event. Finally his mind then convinced him that the problem can be fixed by blaming Tanzan. Fortunately Tanzan feels free to accept that Ekido is needlessly upset and his reply is matter-of-fact rather than defensive. If Ekido wants to think excessively, he may. The thinking was tiring his mind. Since the incident is past and Tanzan was free of it when he put the girl down, Ekido wasted his time carrying the upset for miles.
There are two parts to Ekido’s problem. First off, he is excessively thinking.
. Here is a training video by Eckhart Tolle… “How do we break the habit of excessive thinking?”
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Eckhart explores excessive (addiction to) thinking, offering a handful of ways to put the stop to thoughts and to choose presence of now instead. When body sends a signal, mind gets a thought. You may allow this or you may choose to diminish the thought by coming back to the presence of now.
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A second problem for Ekido is that he didn’t have any control to change what upset him since the upset is about Tanzan’s action. The inner dialog lead to excessive thinking about something that was beyond his control. Some of us spend our time when dealing with people trying to change circumstance that are beyond our control. This is, it turns out, usually just a waste of time and energy.
We may even threaten, scold, manipulate, coerce, bully, plead, beg, shout, pout, bribe or try anything to make a situation go the “right” way — often, only to see things getting progressively worse before they get better. Since negativity attracts more negativity this is quite stressful and the mind-body then is left feeling badly.
Peace is my goal and tolerance, acceptance, compassion, genuine concern and loving presence is my way to get this. Getting better at this began for me with reducing stress and finding inner peace. I began to understand that I was reactive to the content of my life situations and that I was sacrificing sanity this way. Self-will was inadequate. Controlling my surroundings by exercising self-will was not healthy. I began to look for solutions and I found that there are hundreds of great ways to reduce stress and gain personal freedom. Today’s second video may help you to gain some peace of mind for dealing with stress.
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“How to live without Stress in your day-to-day life”
by Eckhart Tolle
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Learning how to achieve peaceful living may be much eased by knowing how to live without reacting to the “content” of our lives. There may be realization that the form of thought need not make a home in me as a lasting identity.
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I hope you find this training useful. I added some more in the comments section and there are additional related articles listed too.
Need help or want to collaborate with me?
e-mail me at thehunt4truth@yahoo.com
Words to hold close to you as you achieve a sense of calm and acceptance about that which has troubled you. It has a sense of divine justice to it that is quite uplifting.
Where did Jung learn about dealing with the darkness within so as not to project this outward… and how did he carry out this courageous work?
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I’ll begin at the end…
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What is The Red Book?
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The Red Book — Liber Novus The Red Book is an account of Carl Jung’s journey in the abstract of his unconscious… handwritten by Carl Gustav Jung, this is the pinnacle for all of his works… the final proof really of Jung’s contributions to understanding the human psyche. The marketed book includes a reproduction of his handwritten manuscript (Swiss) as well as a translation by Sonu Shamdasani and including Jung’s abstract illustrations.
It is a huge book (18 x 12.3 x 2.5 inches), a mystical book; it includes Jung’s fabulous color illustrations… handwritten, its like a medieval manuscript.
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The Red Book, Publication Date: October 19, 2009 | ISBN-10: 0393065677 | ISBN-13: 978-0393065671
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The book is Jung’s personal journal. If you’ve not read any of C. G. Jung’s work, this is not where to begin at exploring his works on discovering the unconscious. There is a lot of material in this book that goes unexplained; most of understanding, in fact, rests on Jung’s volumes of works.
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His work, “Man and His Symbols” is inexpensive and a good place to begin (see also, video; length: 2:31:19). Regarding, approaching the unconscious… Jung claims that he had a dream in which he recognized the need to explain his theories to the lay public. Man and His Symbols is a concise summary of Jung’s works on the unconscious.
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The Red Book is a written account with paintings of Jung’s ongoing, many years of fantasy. Inspired in his work with severely mentally ill patients, by his research, and by his need for spiritual growth and investigation, Jung began in spiritual growth as a Christian. As far as I know, he never claimed to separate from Christianity. However, he was Gnostic. The video at the end of this post is interesting regarding his beliefs. I note below an excerpt from another work that fascinated Jung, his writing of “The Seven Sermons to the Dead” in which he explores the totality of divine power. So, this is not a typical book review.
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My exploration here is for my own purposes to explore Jung’s works and my own spiritual path; it is good for me. I practice nondual Christian training shaped not solely by organized Christian religions. I am not Jungian either; nor Gnostic.Being Christian, I think that Jung’s work is outstanding in as far as he goes. Jung stops at the critical place in spiritual development though; he stops short of awakening in the Holy Spirit while concentrating on continuance to deal instead by escaping the ego from the experience of a humanized spiritual experience (summarized here). Certainly, his work is outstanding and warrants extensive examination.
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I know, I’ve been a Jungian student for many years. Personally, I would like to have met him and gain, by his experience, first hand.
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Christian religions may fail to adequately describe the ego problem. The ego is merely identity, an illusion really that is non-existent. Ego projections separate us from divinity and may disturb us and even helplessly enslave the higher-self in space-time. Ego is constantly contrasting others and we find ourselves led by its self-centered dominance into controlling behaviors, confrontations, anger or self-pity, repression, fear, bitterness, resentments, and self-doubt. Following along in a life that is daily disturbed by ego, experiencing awareness of the higher-self emerges slowly, if at all, from what we don’t want. I think that there isn’t any escaping ego. We must gain faith in divinity greater than our own and seek connections to God’s will by seeking Holy Spirit’s steady guidance.
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Jesus consulted with Holy Spirit from a man’s life in form as Jesus grew to be the human vessel of God the Son. Christ makes appearances then from the last days or weeks or possibly months until Resurrection. Our need for salvation was fulfilled in the Resurrection by defeat of Jesus for the beliefs in fears. He defeats even our greatest beliefs in meeting with Satan for forty days. Jesus completely surrendered to Christ consciousness and thus is the way of the light as Christians believe. Clearly God’s will is all about being love and our self-discovery ought be restrained when our minds wander from this. Certainly love is not a lesson from the ego. Unconditional love is incomprehensible to ego.
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Jung’s influence is growing in religious circles since he related experiences in a religious manner. His work is of the study of the psyche; and psyche in Greek means “soul.” However, Jung was an occultist and his major theories stem from his experience with spirit guides, in particular, Philemon. Jung was on to something important indeed with his exploration of the psyche. Human’s operate mostly by self-centered ego and while spiritual growth is not impossible, ego identity dissociation from spirit is very difficult to overcome. Personally, I greatly value Jung’s work but I draw the line at discovery of my higher-self by occult methods. In my opinion Christian relationship with Holy Spirit is the way to go.
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In 1957, Jung gave an interview to Aniela Jaffé about the Red Book and his process; saying:
The years… when I pursued the inner images, were the most important time of my life. Everything else is to be derived from this. It began at that time, and the later details hardly matter anymore. My entire life consisted in elaborating what had burst forth from the unconscious and flooded me like an enigmatic stream and threatened to break me. That was the stuff and material for more than only one life. Everything later was merely the outer classification, scientific elaboration, and the integration into life. But the numinous beginning, which contained everything, was then.
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Program DescriptionProfessor Sonu Shamdasani introduces the creation and significance of Carl Jung’s Red Book. On view to the public for the first time, the book was the center piece of the exhibitionThe Red Book of C. G. Jung: Creation of a New Cosmologyat The Rubin Museum of Art from October 7, 2009 – February 15, 2010.
SORRY: the source volume is low. This was the best video I could find for what I wanted to quickly demonstrate from Jung’s work.
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The Undiscovered Self — Jung — AwakeningIf you are making a study of Jung’s works, begin instead of with this book with an overview of Jung’s Analytical Psychology, with his theory of archetypes, with self-reflection and with understanding of your own personality… the who are you approach works, in my opinion. Jung’s greatest contribution really is to the questions we all ask of ourselves… who am I? What are my motivations, communication style, and relationships preferences about? You are a lot more effective when you understand yourself as well as people that you must motivate or manage or develop and help or live with. Unless you are planning to spend years at studying Jung, the real importance of his work for you will be that he provides experiences that stimulate asking questions to connect with a higher-self.Use, for example, a personality sorter and begin to know who you are and how prefer to be… if continuing with Jung, read Jung’s earlier published works… it may take 10 or 20 years to evolve a comprehensive knowledge of his work… I’ve been at it for that much or more. Jung’s works came about over many years — his lifetime really.
There are many important aspects of personality. The personality is our way of communicating. As a beginning, you’d discover which psychic energy attitude type is your preference. Orientated by, and related to the object, what is your preference? Are you more Introverted or Extraverted?
An introvert attitude is an abstracting one, motivated from within. That is, energy is internally directed toward the inner self. The primary problem presented to the introvert attitude is how to be withdrawn from the object. The extrovert maintains a positive attitude energy being directed outward toward the outside world.
Strongly orientated extroverts or introverts experience things in quite different ways and this may sometime cause conflict or misunderstandings with others.Jung said that extraversion and introversion are not mutually exclusive and will be self-balancing or compensating through the conscious and unconscious. A strongly extraverted outward consciousness will possess a compensatory strong inward unconscious introvert; and vice-versa. Jung linked this compensatory effect for example to repression of natural tendencies and resulting unhappiness or illness.
Explore the duality of your psyche… set out knowing that you must face your unconscious and even your deepest fears. In the end, an awakening must confront the skeletons in your closet.Beginning with God… forge a path to knowing that the human psyche is “by nature religious.” If you are not open to and interested in spiritual development, Jung is most probably not for you. If you immature in spirit, perhaps Jung is also not for you.If you want to know about reality, about living fully a conscious life, then delve into Jung’s works after finding some spiritual maturity… and come finally about it then to study “The Red Book.” You’ll probably discover his images are interesting too.
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Program Description In this seminar Murray Stein and Paul Brutsche, International School of Analytical Psychology, discuss some of the different images in Carl Jung’s Red Book.
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The Red Book
Here is a brief description of the fantastic Jung that awaits you:
I categorize the work as
CONFRONTATION WITH THE UNCONSCIOUS… THE FINAL HUMAN FRONTIER
like a future sci-fi may capture, a Jung companion work;
a summary of the revelation of Carl Jung…
Septem Sermones ad Mortuos .The Seven Sermons to the Dead transcribed by Carl Gustav Jung, 1916 written by Basilides
Beginning by Pleroma (the totality of divine power) everywhere is completely and without bounds nor end. There is no-thing and yet this is source of all. We, as Creatura, not in the pleroma, but in self, have from source, the smallest point that is everything and yet nothing. This is knowledge. By our Christian view, knowledge is lost or befuddled by choices (good and evil) and we miss the mark (source) by this sin. The separation by sin causes us to forget source and original knowledge; forever concocting choices as though each moment is separate from timeless all.
From Jung’s work, we understand the Pleroma as a source which is endless and eternal that has no qualities because it has all qualities. Even in the smallest subatomic particle known to science, the Pleroma is present without any bounds, eternally and completely. Yet, the smallest to greatest material of the universe have no place in the Pleroma.
Here is an introduction (source: The First Sermon to the Dead)“I begin with nothingness. Nothingness is the same as fullness. In infinity full is no better than empty. Nothingness is both empty and full. As well might ye say anything else of nothingness, as for instance, white is it, or black, or again, it is not, or it is. A thing that is infinite and eternal hath no qualities, since it hath all qualities. This nothingness or fullness we name the Pleroma. Therein both thinking and being cease, since the eternal and infinite possess no qualities. In it no being is, for he then would be distinct from the pleroma, and would possess qualities which would distinguish him as something distinct from the pleroma. In the pleroma there is nothing and everything. It is quite fruitless to think about the pleroma, for this would mean self-dissolution.”
From Pleroma, mystically, there is Creatura (creatures). “We submerge into the Pleroma itself, and we cease to be created beings. This we become subject to dissolution and nothingness.”
“Creatura is not in the pleroma, but in itself. The pleroma is both beginning and end of the created beings. It pervadeth them, as the light of the sun everywhere pervadeth the air. Although the pleroma prevadeth altogether, yet hath created being no share thereof, just as wholly transparent body becometh neither light nor dark through the light nor dark through the light which pervadeth it. We are, however, the pleroma itself, for we are a part of the eternal and the infinite. But we have no share thereof, as we are from the pleroma infinitely removed; not spiritually or temporally, but essentially, since we are distinguished from the pleroma in our essence as creatura, which is confined within time and space.”
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Jung on Individuation:
We, also, are the total Pleroma; for figuratively the Pleroma is an exceedingly small, hypothetical, even non-existent point within us, and also it is the limitless firmament of the cosmos about us. When we strive for the good and the beautiful, we thereby forget about our essential being, which is differentiation, and we are victimized by the qualities of the Pleroma which are the pairs of opposites.
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IndividuationIndividuality is the higher self. The Jungian process of getting there is individuation; the striving after the true being self. So, individuality is in an evolution. Individuality does not ever die nor dissolve unless under special circumstances, perhaps the individual may cease to be, by choice. Individuality remains eternally. Individuation is the process of coming to a psychological wholeness via self-discovery of opposites.Personality does not know why nor how, nor about an incarnated history… as with every birth memory of the past is gone… we come into the world, babes in the flesh, crying and needy. Yet, individuality has an overview of incarnations and of some knowledge of the meaning of everything. Upon an awakening, some people claim to have knowledge of past lives. I do not promote beliefs that these are actual lives of an individual. However, the reported experiences are much like this. I maintain openness to possibility of multiple incarnations. How this may work is beyond the scope of this post. However, we certainly do learn of our individuation via the generations of material that is available to us as much as by self-examination.
IncarnationIn traditional Christianity, incarnation is a belief that Jesus, God the Son or the Logos (Word), “became flesh,” being conceived in the womb of the Virgin Mary, also known as the Theotokos (God-bearer). This is a process that is mysterious and mystical. My understanding of incarnation do not exclude possibility re-incarnations; although, I don’t presently see this as a single person re-incarnating as I more fully explore what is the human experience of incarnation histories. See also:hereAs for Jung’s work, individuation is a process; becoming aware of oneself—that is of the fundamental composition. Individuation is the way toward discovery of a truest self.Liber Novus (printed on the book cover — a subtitle) means in Latin “New Book” but for Jung it meant the new way. Jung certainly put it there to say, “This is the book of the new way.” I like to say, its “The New Way Book.”I’ve met and interacted with more than ten thousand people in my time here… I am writing about this one lifetime.I’ve come to know that we all make choices for reasons. Our choices stem from states of consciousness.
Choices
TWO STATES
…1. Nothing exists …2. Everything exists
It is logically impossible for the idea, God, to not exist, therefore, everything exists is “more” correct, as it may seem. We’d take into consideration potentials as well.Therefore, there is more to be than already is. This will always be the case, I’d say. So, neither state is of itself true, in my opinion. The idea, God, is ever expanding and yet, unchanging.Wait… then, can there be another course of thinking that is more accurate?
THREE STATES
…1. Nothing exists …2. Everything exists …3. Multiplicity is
While the idea, God, is an idea that is represented as a singular being (although not a being in the sense of what we’d normally propose as being), we may perceive God as three or more differentiated beings (the aspects of one).Christianity is what I know best… so, I’ll say from that experience that the idea, God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit is three ideas of the one God. We typically declare in Christian views that they are three beings in unity, as one God.
Anima and AnimusIn reality, every female and every male is a psychological amalgamation of feminine and masculine characteristics (see: contrasexual).Anima (feminine) plus Animus (masculine) contrasexuality derives from the ultimate triune… Eros (masculine–independent archetype: god of love) and Logos (feminine dependant archetype: the principle governing the cosmos) that forms a soul-image.In a simple statement, two bring about a third and the amalgamation of the two in each.It is simple, yet elegant too.Look at love verse hate, and then wonder, what is the third aspect of that duality (autonomy vs. unity)?Is it choices?Choices come about in the differentiated world of men and women.If analyzed to their core, each choice is a factor of two opposing views (or two plus two more, and perhaps another pair and so on).
Closing
We experience yin verse yang (love vs. fear, etc.) and we therefore come to a decision based on choices… morality and ethics, desires, or needs… needs being the most important factor; yet the lowest functioning of reasons for decisions. “After the first “fall,” the divine consciousness descended to the level of the divided consciousness; now after another “fall” descending even further, divine consciousness comes into the depths of the unconscious; it has been “forgotten.” So, we may have a privilege to discover the potential realms of existence and face the great challenge of the “ascension of consciousness” through awakening to love. We discover that fear is the condition that separates us from the divinity that is love.
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For this reason, Jung forged a reconciliation… to healing… to the divine. Read him if you dare. Open mindedness to all possibility is the ideal. There we may see there is no need for attack and defense — all that is real is love and all that is unreal is fear. A focused and sustained attention enables us to see our attachments, clinging to suffering, attempts to avert imagination from fears to fantasy, an so on. We must seek hope of releasing their hold on us. A focused and relaxed attention equips us to contact, collect, and organize our inner energies; to support the emergence of consciousness from the lower energies. Attention enables us to relate to other people and provide possibility of opening our heart-mind. Heart animates life in the present moment. Taking the present moment as an opportunity then for connecting with Holy Spirit, directing our attention toward the Divine, in true prayer, Spirit creates a channel through us by which the higher-self may awaken… into consciousness.
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It is the subjective, anti-scientific, mystical aspect of Jung that attracted me to his works and to embrace some of his theories. During his time, Jung was mistakenly identified as a scientist. This simply is not the case. His great work of identifying personality characteristics can be and has been integrated into modern scientific works. However, his methods were not scientific.
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So, here for you is another update of lifelong lessons of mine — a bit more of The Hunt For Truth of spiritual awakening. Its not really a book review, not really a summary of my learning, but a fair summary of my fascination with Jung and his book. He had got me thinking. This is really my findings for myself upon reflection of the genius of Carl Gustav Jung.
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Jung, Brief Biography (Amazon)
Carl Gustav Jung (1875-1961) was a Swiss psychiatrist, an influential thinker and the founder of analytic psychology (also known as Jungian psychology). Jung’s radical approach to psychology has been influential in the field of depth psychology and in counter-cultural movements across the globe. Jung is considered as the first modern psychologist to state that the human psyche is “by nature religious” and to explore it in depth. His many major works include “Analytic Psychology: Its Theory and Practice,” “Man and His Symbols,” “Memories, Dreams, Reflections,” “The Collected Works of Carl G. Jung,” and “The Red Book.”
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Jung, Beliefs (Youtube)
Carl Jung and Gnosticism
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Program DescriptionThis is a clip from a British documentary, however the exact source is not identified.
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Program Description The World Within – C.G. Jung in His Own Words
A 1990 Documentary about Carl Gustav Jung that explains his standpoints mainly by using footage of him talking.
I would love to know if Jung is of further interest to readers. Likes are wonderful, but if you have a few moments, please let me know how this post and/or the related posts are of interest for you. I do this work for myself, but I do very much welcome having some comments and feedback.
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
Eric
Being open-minded can be really tough sometimes. Most of us are brought up with a set of beliefs and values and, throughout our lives, tend to surround ourselves with people who share the same values and beliefs. Therefore, it can be difficult when we’re faced with ideas that challenge our own and, though we may wish to be open-minded, we may struggle with the act of it from time to time.
the Hunt for Truth 