Saturday, March 26, 2011

BEWARE OF FALSE GURUS & PROPHETS





In the first days of the now occurring trial of celebrity self-help coach James Arthur Ray, partial author of the best selling book “The Secret”, prosecutors are using his own voice to try to paint him as responsible for the deaths of three participants in a sweat-lodge ceremony at a Sedona-area resort. "There's no sweat lodge like my sweat lodge," Ray said in an audiotape from the event that prosecutors played in the courtroom.
"You'll feel like you're going to die. I guarantee that." In October 2009, as he prepped the lodge participants - there were 49 clients and eight volunteer aides - he said, "You have to get to a point where you surrender, and it's OK to die." He repeatedly said, "It's not a question of whether you're going to die. You are. The question is: How did you live?"

Two people died in the sweat lodge incident, so in a way, I guess Ray was right. One of the survivors said that she was searching for enlightenment. Apparently all considered Mr. Ray their teacher, but why would someone follow a teacher that teaches that you must die for enlightenment? Some people believe that suffering brings enlightenment. Sweat lodges with heat so extreme that the participants pass out or die do not bring enlightenment unless you consider bodily anguish or death enlightening. In a way, I guess it will at least enlighten you on how to die.
Some religious sects beat themselves with chains, believing that self punishment brings heightened spirituality. Others use various other methods involving pain from self inflicted agony, believing that it brings them closer to God. Usually these methods are employed in search of some elusive spiritual insights that somehow they could not get otherwise. For those who believe pain is euphoric, it will be, but there are other methods available that are quite as effective that do not involve privation or such self accepted hardships. You could of course, just light up a joint and kick back with a good high, and in truth, some drugs can indeed relax or distract the conscious awareness enough to loosen the egos unrelenting hold on physical reality.
There are other more innocuous methods of what could be considered self inflicted punishment for some other segments of the population, such as running marathons, extreme mountain climbing, long distance swimming, biking and many others. For sure, there is a factor of self satisfaction gained in the achievement of certain goals, surpassing what has been done before and pushing the human body to new limits, but these are usually done with full knowledge of the individual involved in the activity, and it is good to keep in mind that most people would consider these extreme activities quite punishing.
Let me say that in all reality, in this world and others, suffering is only good if it teaches you how “Not to Suffer”. Not to say that you can't be taken to a new level of consciousness, for indeed, in some cases you can, but to what end? There are more acceptable ways to seek knowledge without the degradation of the body or annihilating consciousness in the pursuit of being reborn, so to speak. In other words, you do not have to die to live, but in other terms, you do die often and live again just as often.
The world is full of spiritual teachers, or so-called teachers, some call themselves Swami, Guru, Enlightened One, Pope, and some of these teachers do have valid knowledge to convey. There are priests, ministers and assorted clergy of all religions and cults, who will try to convince you that you were flawed at birth, a born sinner, doomed to damnation unless some kind of penance is made and indulgences given. Usually, but not in all cases, there seems to be a universal principle at work here, and that is that personal shortcomings, defects, flaws and sins can be alleviated and totally forgiven with the ample transfer of currency, from your bank account to their coffers.
Sometimes the ones dispensing the forgiveness are involved in molesting your children in their spare time or pilfering the collection basket. I do not intend to denigrate all spiritual teachers, for some are well motivated and altruistic in their pursuits, but usually these are not the ones selling you prayer cloths, holy water from the river Jordan, or blessing your piles of prayer requests, before tossing them in the dumpster and depositing your checks in their Swiss bank accounts before boarding their personal jets for a vacation in the south of France.
If a so called teacher tells you that God wants you to be wealthy he should also tell you that God also wants you to be poor, but no evangelical preacher will ever tell you that because it would not motivate you to contribute to the cause. To God (All That Is), as much can be learned from observing the life of a beggar as the life of a millionaire, in fact probably more. The pompous religious icon with all his golden crowns, staffs and vestiges knows nothing of mans true relationship with the earth.
No pope ever knew the migrations of the buffalo across endless plains or the plague of the locusts as they swept across vast stretches of Western lands, the exodus of populations of entire species as they fled before fires that swept aside wide stretches of their home habitats. No king ever knew the pangs of hunger and starvation, the scourge of plagues, for they were above all of that, securely tucked away in their castles surrounded by moats filled with water and minds filled with indifference and ignorance of the plights of the common man. So, are these the teachers you would follow? But you do! If the teacher does not understand the relationship of the common man with the animals and the earth, how could they teach you anything?
But still, you hang on to these dead beliefs. Why? Because you will always wait to jettison one belief until you have another waiting in the wings. You need that security before setting your course in uncharted waters without a captain aboard, not realizing that you are the captain. A captain must learn to trust himself and cannot depend on others for guidance forever. No matter that the destination is unknown and the arrival uncertain, the journey long and arduous, you can learn to read the stars and your reality in new ways, but to do so, you must break the chains of old, worn out myths and children's tales, step aside and follow a new path inward to discover the source of those stars and realities.
As long as you look for answers in the exterior world, you will come up against a brick wall, since the answers you seek can only be found in the secrets of consciousness which creates the brick wall in the first place. In other words all physical phenomenon and physical knowledge are by-products of inner events thrust outward into the realm of atoms and molecules. If you want to know about the beginning and source of the universe or the existence of a God, then look not through a telescope or microscope but explore the mysteries of consciousness, the source of all physical and non-physical reality.
A true teacher can to some extent explain the nature of reality, but it requires your active participation and those who sit quietly and obediently with head bowed in a church pew waiting for enlightenment, will never find it. As I have said before, none of these false teachers, gurus, prophets and popes can really hurt you even though on the outside it may seem so, but they can surely impede and delay your progress. Ask any man if he really believes that he needs to be taken to the point of death or give his last dollar to become enlightened and he will tell you NO. So, if every man inwardly knows this, why do you chase false gurus sometimes to the point of your own death.
The trend is toward increasing “Awareness” of that which is so elusive at this point of your life. You wonder why you cannot communicate with your dead relatives and loved ones if they have truly survived death. Indeed, you sometimes wonder why bad things happen to good people. You wonder why your life isn't better if you are truly creating your reality. You wonder why God allows suffering if He is really a caring, loving God. You wonder if you have lived before and if you will live again, then why don't you know it. You wonder if there are alien civilizations and although it is almost ludicrous, you ask if anyone else is out there.
Again, the trend is toward increasing awareness throughout this life and in the next and the next You live a series of lives in the physical “Earth” system, and the purpose is to learn, grow and evolve and with the expansion of your consciousness, you will become aware of things that are now surrounding you that you simply cannot perceive. The trend is to notice things that now evade your awareness and that is coming, even though it seems at a very slow pace. You will evolve in spite of yourself, but keep in mind, there is no limit to the time you have and the lives you are allotted. What you do not learn in this life, you will perhaps learn in the next and so on.
It only gets better, life after life, world after world, but that should not be an excuse to waste your time buried in decaying dogma and old worn out myths and legends, many of which are distorted or totally wrong. On the other hand, you can waste time and sometimes place your life in jeopardy believing everything that is told to you. You have to learn to trust yourself and your inner knowledge rather than the spoken or written word. Do not believe what others tell you based on the words alone. Words can lie, but your intuitive self, your inner knowledge cannot lie and in fact they are incapable of misleading you. Do not believe what I tell you either, but subject what you hear or read to the only true test of validity, how do you really feel about it. Why would you presume that someone else knows more about you than you do yourself?
In a nutshell, subject information that you hear or read to the ultimate judge of validity, your “Heart”, meaning, your inner feelings and emotions, your intuition. If your inner senses tell you that something is “Rotten in Denmark”, then it is likely so. I try to explain to you what is, but I do not know everything and there are concepts that I struggle with too, so I can tell you with some authority, “Reality” isn't easy. Generally speaking, if it's really simple, it isn't true. Reality is unbelievably complex and difficult to understand and requires some degree of effort. If you believe that “God created the world in six days “and then got so tired he had to sit down and rest on the seventh , then I have a bridge to sell you.
There are infinite worlds, universes and alien civilizations and their existence will slowly become more evident to you, but you must set out on a journey with purpose, knowing in fact, there will be no end to your personal expansion in the expedition of consciousness..


Thursday, March 10, 2011

EVERYTHING SEEMS TO BE GOING WRONG IN MY LIFE

Am I stuck in the middle of this?

The question as it was posed by anonymous;
I really don't feel like going into too much detail, but my problem is this. It seems as though every time I do something to try and move forward in this world, I get yanked in the other direction, I feel like a dog trying to jump a fence while chained to a tree. I moved out of my mothers house because I saw the struggle it was to pay bills and keep food on the table, I saw myself as more of a burden (although) my mother constantly told me otherwise. 
I'm now living on my own still attending college, my bills are starting to catch up to me because a part time job isn't enough to handle them. I can't quit my job for obvious reasons, but I can't work more hours because of school. Last month I get into a car accident, it really wasn't, but it ended up LEGALLY being my fault, forcing me to have to pay to get my own car fixed, needless to say the car is still sitting smashed in my driveway. I really want to know, is it just meant for me to be stuck in the middle like this and besides more money how can I sort this out? It seems like the root to my problems is also the solution.

Dear anonymous,
I usually don't answer personal questions in this way, but in light of the fact that the article you were reading; WHY DO BAD THINGS KEEP HAPPENING TO ME? is the most read of my articles, I think it is important enough to do so this time. As I have mentioned before and will do so again; I don't re-read my previous articles before beginning a new article, even though the subject material may be similar, preferring a totally new slant , not colored by previous material and hopefully approaching difficult concepts from a new angle in order to clarify and expand on what has been said before. 
One thing I can gather from the statistics that I receive, is that many, and I really mean “many” people are dissatisfied with their present situations in life and they truly have no idea why BAD THINGS KEEP HAPPENING TO THEM.
Anonymous was dead on right when he/she said the “Root of the problem is the solution”, and the root of the problem truly is the solution and lies within your own ability to change it. First let me remind you that I am not a psychologist and make no claims to such lofty status, but I do understand the true nature of reality; explaining it is another story entirely.
So you think you have problems?; Imagine trying to explain to a world mired in centuries old dogmatism, myths and superstitions, that practically everything they believe is dead wrong. Let me explain; all systems of reality, worlds, planes, dimensions and universes are created by Soul/Entities with purposes in mind, they are not meaningless, but are purposeful creations with overall themes involved, but there is NO pre-destination involved since the entity learns and matures from what might be considered both good and bad from your perspective. 
In other words, once created, your world was given full freedom to evolve in its own way, no matter if you would judge it bad or good. With this in mind, if you drove your world to the brink of extinction, there would be no God swooping down from the heavens to save you
So, I have to try and explain concepts that most of the dogmatic world would scoff at, and that's not an easy job. I am trying to convey the feeling that what is said here is true, even though many would not agree. But, I ask you; would you allow a priest who is molesting your children to teach them about morality? Some do. Would you let scientists who believe that the world and universe were created purely by chance, convince you that life has no purpose? 
Some will. Would you let a doctor who is always sick amputate your breast based on his personal judgement that you just might get breast cancer at some time in the future based on questionable genetic forecasts? Many do, and so thousands of organs are sacrificed at the alter of ignorance.
The point I am trying to make here is that when your personal experience and personal feelings tell you one thing, don't believe what someone else tells you if it contradicts what your own body and mind tell you. If you feel well and a doctor tells you otherwise, run in the other direction. 
You are here to discover that you do indeed have an inner knowledge about your own self, body, mind and soul, if you will just begin to trust in yourself. One simple cell in your body, knows more about the true condition of the body than all the doctors at the most prestigious hospitals and universities combined. You can learn to read your cellular knowledge and your reality if you pay attention.
Now, having said all of that, I want to get to “Anonymous's” problems, and as stated they are many, yet they are all a result of misdirected energy as it flows through the human consciousness, materializing into physical objects and events. I don't want to get into esoteric concepts here other than to say, if something good seems to happen to you, it is your fault, so give yourself a pat on the back. 

If something bad seems to happen to you, it is also your fault but you are inclined not to want to take credit for that. Your inner self does not play favorites in that respect, to it, events that you consider bad or good are the same and it projects and constructs them with equal finesse into three dimensional physical reality, automatically and effortlessly.
The ego oriented human bodily structure aided and abetted by your inner consciousness is eminently qualified in what it does as you weave your way through the physical environment, selecting from a vast reservoir of probable future events the ones that you want to materialize in your life. 
Of course, all of this depends not only on the ego focused decisions that you make, but on the inner ego's almost magical ability to direct thought, desire, belief, emotion and expectation into physical form, thrusting it into physical matter in a world it cannot see.
When you decide to walk across a room, you do not consciously think about the thousands, maybe millions of minute calculations and decisions that must be made at the cellular level for you to be able to lift a leg, move a foot, tighten a muscle, stiffen a ligament or take that first step. If you had to think about each and every one of these small but necessary decisions and subsequent actions, you would not be able to get up out of your chair or pick your nose. 
Your ego consciousness would be overwhelmed by the complications involved in the simple act of walking. But nevertheless, you do this so smoothly, effortlessly and automatically that you hardly ever think about the countless decisions that are made by your inner self and your unknown bodily consciousness carrying out your intentions.
In much the same way, your inner self in co-operation with your ego oriented outer self manages to do likewise in creating your bodily image, your natural environment, your physical objects and events and indeed, even your world that you hold so dear. I have written about this creative nature of the Soul/Entity as it creates from itself personalities such as yourself to garner experience and work through various challenges in many worlds. 
You came into this world under the auspices of your Entity/Soul with the intention of meeting certain problems head-on, dealing with them, not to be defeated by them, but to rise above the challenges and emerge victorious with your head held high.
Your inner self and your outer personality (ego self) work together so handily that you as a species still haven't figured out that you are creating your reality as you go along, and so, this presents me with this problem. If you haven't yet figured out something that you have been, as a species doing for many centuries, how in the world am I going to convince you that you are actually doing it now. Rhetorical question of course
Well, I don't give up so easily because there are some among you who do sense this natural trait that consciousness possesses and use it at your discretion to make your lives better. As I have said before, everyone is not at the same level in your world and there are some among you who know the secret that others are still ignorant of, but that's another story.
Anonymous wonders why he/she seems to be stuck in the middle of a myriad of bad things happening to her/him, when indeed, he/she is astute enough to sense that the root of the problems is also the solution, and it is within him/her. 
Things DO NOT HAPPEN TO YOU Period! You CREATE THINGS, then you blindly bump into them believing they were always there and it's just an accident, bad luck, a chance encounter with fate or maybe you have disappointed God in some way and are being punished for you indiscretions. Maybe it's just bad karma. 
I am well aware that it is doubly hard to understand that you DO CREATE your reality atom by atom, but also to take responsibility for the unfortunate things that you have created and begin remedial action to correct the problems, for no one you would say, would knowingly cause bad things to happen to themselves.
You cannot change something until you “own it”, meaning understanding that you created it in the first place, and then set about changing it . You all know someone who seems to “have all the luck”. 
Everything goes well for them, life is easy, plenty of money, happy family, good health, etc. Its enough to make you sick isn't it? (smile). Those people have either consciously or unconsciously learned the secret to constructing positive events in their life and ignoring negative ones, while others seemingly less fortunate have to struggle just to exist on the bare necessities from day to day.
In these articles, I purposely have to answer questions in more or less general terms, so they are understood and can be used by everyone, so I speak in generalities about “anonymous” problems in this article, but this applies to all who read it. 
There are others involved with Anonymous's problems and so pretty much everything you do on your day to day schedule involves others to some extent, and so, where unfortunate bad circumstances emerge, you cannot totally absolve others of some complicity in forming the events of your life, since knowingly or unknowingly they participate on a psychic level forming those events.
They are attracted to the events just as the criminal and the victim are attracted to each other for complex psychological reasons known only to them. There is an undercurrent to reality that you do not perceive, where the nuts and bolts of emerging events are worked out below your range of perception, before any event is finally firmed up for materialization.
“Events” as you know them, are physical evidence, living proof of the quality of your inner state of being. They show themselves as symbols of a healthy inner state or one in disarray. If your exterior life is good in most respects, then you can pretty much be assured that your inner state is healthy and on the right track, but if the events in your life are disruptive and negative, then some soul searching of your belief system is in order.
Discordant beliefs, held and allowed to stagnate, usually indicate blockages of the free and uninhibited flow of the creative energy of the Soul/Entity and ultimately of All That Is, as it is projected into your world.
When you have problems, most would agree that money or health is involved and much can be learned by scrutinizing your past memories of your childhood and early years to see if you can find negative influences and beliefs that you may have picked up through the years that you are still clinging to that could be harming your ability to acquire funds or maintain good health now.
Here are just a few examples of dangerous beliefs regarding wealth that you may have picked up along the way, and should be dispensed with before things can begin to improve;
It's easier for a camel to get through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to get into heaven.
God must love poor people because He made so many of them.
Keep your life free from the love of money, and be content with what you have.
Holding these distorted kinds of beliefs can give you a feeling of guilt, that could make you feel that you deserve some kind of retribution, punishment from God, and so confuse the inner self into creating something that you don't really want in your life. Money is Good! Money is Bad! Both come from the same source and both are equally valid in your world.
If a lack of money is your problem, you must make sure that you understand that money itself is neutral and having lots of it is no different than having lots of food, lots of knowledge or lots of cow dung, and the process of creating all of these is essentially the same. If you unconsciously believe that the possession of money is evil, then you will always find yourself lacking.
The same holds true in the case of failing health that I will not go into here.
I would recommend reading past articles on (Getting Rich) or (Getting What You Want)(Illness).