Sunday, March 31, 2013

an Easter Sunday renewal of Life!



WANTING FROM WHOLENESS: As human beings we have fantastic opportunities to participate in and contribute to the process of divine creation, but oh what a learning curve we face to know and enjoy our own amazing potentials! We are spiritual beings who can remember perfect origins and imagine perfect destinations, even as we may struggle deep within the current imperfect realities that we inherit and continue from our families of conflict. In comparison, nature seems enviable for so much beauty and balance already attained; flowering plants and agile creatures of spectacular grace have all they require from genetic design to belong and thrive within fertile ecosystems, while we hairless vulnerable apes must push and be pushed to survive in clumsy communities of our own ongoing invention. Our animal needs remain embarrassingly close and tangible, even as our soulful desires reach so poignantly high as to depict heavenly ideals not yet seen on the planet. We ache and yearn so tenderly, so urgently, and each in our own ways, as we dream toward fantastic utopias of abundant love, creativity, productivity, and prosperity, for places where we can share the joys of inspiration and well-being that will unleash a more magical nature. As a people we seem made to want so many things that we do not yet have, and to such points of folly and pain, that many have blamed our capacity to desire itself, saying humanity was wrong to long for more than it had, and we should have never left a garden of simpler times. But I have to say no, because I’m astounded at the diversity of talents and dreams latent in people and closer to the surface than ever. There is no doubt in my mind that the human journey will have been worth it when we have attained our divine mastery here, so we must comfort and guide each other as best we can on the way. Understanding how to want from our souls is a key to making Heaven on Earth, and it always has been and will be.

In the Gospel of Thomas it is written that "If you bring forth what is within you, what you bring forth will save you. If you do not bring forth what is within you, what you do not bring forth will destroy you." Desires are like this, and they come from our souls. There are dreams that we were born with, things that God and the entire universe have planned for us to have and call our own, but because we are each unique creators in training our dreams cannot be only handed to us. We must be in on the game, we must want enough to choose and believe in ourselves. As we learn to uphold our desires and delight to observe how the process of creation unfolds, we become what we were meant to become, and we discover our love for the design of the ongoing eternally self-fulfilling self. If not, we destroy ourselves in the shame of desires that we cannot stop wanting and yet never have, at least not in any healthy sustainable way. Too many people have made an art of cycling through short-term pleasures that actually oppose their own long-term satisfactions, with dead-end behavior patterns like addiction and manipulation that have given their desires a bad name. Desire is so much more than sexual chemistry for example, yet a host of related terms including attraction, sensuality, arousal, excitation, and passion all get attached to little more than a temporary physical high. Then when people get burned on too many roller coaster rides in the body, they often swing too far in the opposite direction, wanting God and spirit to somehow be impersonal, supernaturally calm, and outside of a too fecund nature. It would be funny if it were not so sad, for how reflexively people have taught themselves to separate Heaven from Earth, and throw the baby out with the bathwater. Theories get made for how creativity sublimates sex for all those creative people who can’t deal with sexuality, when in fact it’s the other way around. Sex sublimates creativity, and the universe is vastly, richly, seductively fertile beyond imagination. You can’t help but desire with abandon more of everything that’s right and good for yourself, as you open up to your very own soul in creation. Rejoining the chorus of infinite celebration will bring you so much bliss and joy from your own synchronistic places of belonging, that you will never want to follow a self-destructive self-abandoning path of aloneness again. Even if repeatedly finding your way back from old habits and falls from grace must become the challenge for a lifetime of healing, sooner or later you will make it Home to having every good thing. You promised yourself this as a soul incarnating for its “last lifetime” on the old Earth, which is really of course just the first lifetime in the new world of love without end.

So the next time you find yourself returning to a dream of desire that you have either proudly or shamefully carried within you for most all of your life, pause to look at how the images of its procurement are making you feel. The wisdom of any true desire is that you cannot want something you do not already have the seeds for, and which you were not made to have more of steadily. You don’t have to work hard to make anything happen to receive your own divine plan and soul inheritance; the way to your fullest joy is full of receiving magical love from the whole universe, which wants nothing more than to see you become more of your true loving self. So if there is a future You who is fully enjoying the best dreams you can have, then the question to answer today is, are you more or less connecting with that future self?

There are two ways to be with your wanting, and one is from wholeness, and the other from lack. All creation is a projection from the present moment of infinite depth, so a future-oriented image of what you need or want to have in your life someday is just a higher octave, a greater extent, a clearer picture, for something that you have available to let in here and now. Your imagined desire is a signal from the future to get on the path now, be alert to what you already have, because this is your destiny starting from your current location. So if a desirable goal brings you pain for how much you want that and yet have no idea how to get there, don’t get caught in the trap of heaven and earth separating. Relax, trust that the future is finding you already, and focus on what’s happening around you right now. Locate your feelings for what you didn’t have, and let the emotional holes become filled until you become whole. It may be hard to believe at first, given how very satisfying the future looks compared to the present which doesn’t have that dream job, relationship, inspiration, opportunity, skill, or whatever else it is you’re wanting so much more of. But the fact is that God is giving you all you need starting now, which is exactly why the desire came to entice you more with its scent. There’s something within your current grasp, a subtle and energetic next step perhaps but concrete in its ability to satisfy you and set you on the path of knowing that everything’s going to be alright and work out. If you can connect 100% with your present moment, then you will become 100% happy and confident, with a bliss that will steadily melt and heal the old wounds so the future will be guaranteed. Always, the present you in your soul center is the one who is functioning at the fullness of your current ability, so that is the giving of 100% that makes all the difference.

This then is the secret to wanting eternally. The old way to want was from pain, from lack, from the stress reaction to get out of a bad place and become happy again. The future was seen as the antidote to the present, starkly different, and this separation consciousness was supposed to motivate us to build and get ahead, but instead it overwhelmed with the need to numb out and disown the self of lost hope. Humanity is burdened with a lot of destructive habits now, for pleasures and escapism which disconnect us from our true future selves. The only real way to want is from wholeness, because then you’re right: that future self you imagine with the dream come true is incredibly happy, and so must you become to get there. Just as the future self is content, so too you can be content in the present if you tune into the fullness available now, and then you will be on your easy self-fulfilling path of the connected continuous self. The way to want sustainably is not about the discontinuity of contrasting future and present, but the continuity of being an eternal soul, here and there, everywhere, balanced and always complete and full.

For too long people have feared that contentment will mean a lack of motivation and consequent stagnation, but this is not so, because that was a false belief bolstered by the false contentment of addictions and numbness to pain (think couch potatoes). The peace of the fulfilled soul is very dynamic, full of growth in the naturally appearing opportunities for ever increasing joy. The secret of life’s abundance is in learning to let it happen, to receive the love that always gives more and thus transforms and grows you from the inside out. Wanting from wholeness is a fantastic fabulous ride, because you are 100% fulfilled every step of the way. Of course then all your future dreams are inevitable and on their way, because they’re more of who you really are as you naturally grow. There is no pain, no anxiety of what must you do to make and ensure the right thing to happen or else you might fail. When you are so busy discovering how good you can already feel as you fully attend to the richness of the present moment, then the unfolding manifesting magnificent presence of eternity is always expanding in all directions and carrying you forward effortlessly. You’ll be amazed at how quickly dreams can come true then, by the letting go of old ill-fitting karmic clothes, and the appearance of miraculous synchronicities of connecting what you’re ready for, with what roles other people have been looking to fill with someone as wonderful as you! A symphony of delight soars heavenward faster than you can say “boo”, or better yet “thank you”, as you learn to trust and not fear the effervescent way of love’s miracles. After all, boundless gratitude for what you and the universe can create together in love has always been one of the greatest hallmarks of who and what you truly are! Love in the flesh, joy in the form, your own uniquely rich, generous, and beloved identity of the All-loving mother father God who creates without end for the eternal wonder of the greatness of Life.

- Carl J. Schroeder, Easter Sunday March 31, 2013

http://www.facebook.com/HowToMakeHeavenOnEarth

“The wisdom of desire is that you can only want more of what you already have. Therefore find and enter your best moments today, to grow the seeds of your perfect foreseen tomorrows.”

(my photo of a common and so uncommonly beautiful barn owl at the local Stone Zoo - taken with my children on Holy Saturday, the day before Easter when Jesus lay in the tomb like the phoenix before resurrection - and the phrase that came to me that evening to crystallize my awareness of a healing reconnection I was being given to rise again from the ashes of another lost love. The wisdom of this magnificent animal came to me in the form of its flying regularly about its enclosure as birds flew overhead in the sky, their shadows crossing in a flock that must have reminded the owl of its lack of freedom to be on exhibit for us. As I felt the presence of a greater power and remembered Athena whose symbol is the owl, the eerily faced creature came to roost and stare at me, so I could lean forward and take some pictures through the gaps in the fence. This week had been a return of Orphic mysteries to me, as the myth of Orpheus has resonated with me all my life, and recent looking back to the past caused yet another hopeful Eurydice to vanish into the underworld. Well, I don’t mean to become too mythic or esoteric here, only to say that the way that this owl flew around its cage to match the freer flight of birds overhead seemed to set the stage for a breakthrough of understanding for how to attain my own dreams of desire. Find and feel a connection to your destiny now, and you will be on your way to that timeless place of soul wisdom from which all good dreams are fulfilled in the steps that make the most of what we have to work with, now and forever. Thank you God, for helping me feel more alive.)

Monday, March 25, 2013

A New Creation

Happy Lady Day! For more heartfelt explanations of that, see this blog's entries for 2011 March 25 and Easter. But today we get more heady with my latest entry from HowToMakeHeavenOnEarth.org repeated below...



ORIGINS: Astrophysics is providing one of the great lenses on the universe both physical and metaphysical, as it combines unimaginably far star gazing with unbelievably detailed knowledge gained from observing how things work here on Earth. Recent developments have proven very exciting, as the world’s largest atom smasher has at last found the Higgs Boson - that so-called God particle which condenses for a micro-instant out of the mysterious Higg’s field that permeates everything and gives all matter its characteristic mass and therefore existence. Higgs theory will then feed into astronomy’s latest coup with its release of the infant universe’s best clearest baby picture yet, a microwave heat map showing the curious “lumpiness” which occurred shortly after the Big Bang sprayed spontaneously arising matter and anti-matter apart so fast that it wouldn’t all just disappear again, nearly 14 billion years ago. We owe our lives to these uneven distribution spots, seen as blue for cooler and red for hotter in the oval image now popular in headlines, because the lumps seeded the gravitational effects that pulled together the galaxies and stars which gave birth to our bodies. The overall picture is now so consistent with the theory of inflation that says, logically or not, everything once exploded out of nothing, that I had to laugh at the celebration of scientists for at least agreeing on how much they can’t explain. It’s like going to a museum with a bunch of friends to admire a famous artwork, and the painting is unfortunately covered for repairs, but you’re all just so delighted to study the frame, to agree on its length, width, and sturdiness, that you actually have more fun speculating what kind of canvas it could hold than missing the picture itself. As big as is the observable material universe, less than 5% of it is ordinary matter, 27% is a missing so-called dark matter known only by its gravitational effects (whatever it is, we wouldn’t be here without it), and 68% is a missing so-called dark energy, whose anti-gravitational force keeps spreading space itself apart to this day. See what I mean? So the vast majority of infinity is still completely unknown, even if we have nailed down some numbers for the size of that unknown. Half-baked metaphors for things we can’t understand will continue to drive the kind of hand-waving and psycho-spiritual philosophizing that is the bane of hard science for many more years to come, but the hard scientists can’t complain since they have little better to offer than measurements for the gaps in their own comprehension.

As a mystic I certainly don’t have all the answers either, but I do like to follow the clues and feel the integrated effects of cosmic theories on daily living. From my holistic perspective, the universe is in a state of continual resolution into existence, as the explosive soul-searching questions of self-awareness (Why?! How?! With whom?!) are perpetually reborn within us in cycles that drive our outward expansion of choices for life explorations. 14 billion years ago is happening inside us right now, from the pure center of soul which resonates with that which it first created on the outside. Find what speaks your truth in the world and follow it, as far as remains true for you in your ongoing needs to evaluate and assess your own progress in life. The inflationary model of the universe’s origins says that every point is as much the center as any other, much like a balloon expanding with all its surface points growing. So yes, the world does revolve around you, you’re as special as everyone else in your reality. You come from the Creator inside of you just like everybody else, so the universe holds the path that points back to you. Your thoughts and feelings have impact more than you may ever know, and your beliefs and theories on life are actively shaping and filtering what will be possible tomorrow. Your powers to change what you choose, to align with worldviews and philosophies, to act from your own adopted and evolving explanations for how and why things are happening just as they do and for whose benefits, have God-like implications for your role in the world. As your awareness grows for what you can do and comprehend, so does the pace at which you can design the future destiny. The dinosaurs unquestionably ruled this planet for millions of years, huge beasts of nature’s forays into might making right. A few scurrying mammals outlived them and evolved into the thinking questioning planning humans who could change the world like nobody’s business in a matter of just a few thousand years. The pace of the change we make possible keeps accelerating, even as we fail to fully understand what is this stuff of existence with which we are playing and out of which we are made. And that’s okay, our ignorance is acceptable and perhaps even necessary, so long as we love. It’s love’s job to keep all things fitting together with care, with increasing capacities for attention to detail.

One of the ways that future dreamers like to use the new physics is to apply the strange quantum effects of the sub-microscopic realm to the macroscopic world where miracles may be called for, but nobody said the metaphorical extensions of such wishful thinking would be necessarily valid or sane. Non-locality (particles can have entangled fates so they instantly effect each other across any distance) gets tapped to explain telepathy and synchronicity, uncertainty (particles can be in multiple states until the observer’s observations button them down) might explain the success of far-out experiments that the skeptics can’t scientifically reproduce, and quantum foam (a level of the universe at which matter can come in and out of existence with space-bending effects) would seem to suggest possibilities for instant manifestation, but nobody really knows beyond what they can actually experience. Myself, I got excited with the talk of string theory some years ago and an additional eight or so dimensions curled up somehow within us right now, for entire alternate universes microscopically implanted alongside our present locations. Oooh, teleportation, inter-dimensional shifting, with minimal effort, if I could only learn how! But seriously, we’re straining our brains with physical analogies that could be completely invalid, to get to places that I for one still don’t know how to reach. I had to dig deeper than the popular press to find out why additional dimensions were even being considered in string theory. As I recall, it’s because one of the fundamental four forces of nature that is so strong between atoms and so weak at greater distances, is dropping off in power so much faster than the usual inverse square law that additional dimensions might explain where the force is going. It would be like if we stepped away from a light bulb and expected the light to grow steadily dimmer, only it far more quickly went dark. What happened, did the light leak into another universe? That’s what it seems like, but everyone’s still really just guessing for what might be going on. Given that 95% of the universe can’t even yet be observed much less explained by our present minds (27% dark matter plus 68% dark energy) it seems just as foolish for the miracle workers to think that modern science bolsters their case for omnipotence, as for the hard scientists to dismiss all hand wavers as quacks, fantasists, and (shudder) religious fundamentalists.

There is in fact a basic problem I see to all of this worldly thinking, which might explain not only many of the weirder material effects in physics, but also the popular recurring dreams for a liberating transcendence of the known universe. There’s a materialist assumption pervading everyone’s thinking, and mystics who say the world is an illusion don’t necessarily respect the fears they raise by suggesting that objects aren’t secure and reliable. The world is a very useful illusion, and it is perfectly sustainable and reliable for those who use it to love. The only caveat is that when concrete objects and physical laws are in the way of love, then indeed they are flexible and soluble in ways that defy the old logic. Don’t be scared. Don’t give up your power, don’t say anything or nothing is possible, don’t wait for God or science to do your life for you. Just keep to the love and living an expanded awareness of what it means to be alive in a divinely aware universe. God cares, so can you.

Physics already tells us that anything can be treated as a particle or a wave, depending on which approach is more useful in a situation. The equations doesn’t have to make intuitive sense, they just work; science is eminently pragmatic this way. Light is both a particle and wave, and so are you. All of our current metaphors and explanations for the universe depend on objects, with waves usually being conceived as the patterns of moving objects: a wave of water, of air to make sound, of photons to make light. Some people get excited to imagine that quantum effects might mean deep down all physical objects are convertible into energy that can be moved around and shape-shifted miraculously - but then too it gets scary to imagine what keeps such a fluid system from going out of control. When the Large Hadron Collider was being readied in Switzerland to find the Higg’s Boson, there was a real fear that recreating the conditions of the Big Bang could destabilize current physical laws and destroy the planet. Physicists scoffed but they didn’t really know. Fortunately we’re still here, and the God Particle has been found. Now the latest twist is that the energy of the Higg’s Boson has been pegged to a value which includes the mathematical possibility of a tunneling effect in space-time which will instantly vaporize the universe someday, returning everything to undifferentiated energetic soup. Again, nobody really knows. So time and again the message seems to be that you can count on your universe being there for you, so you can live work and play with the ones that you love. But don’t think that this world is so real and solid that greater forces aren’t holding it together for you. The universe is a gift, given to you. God is real and God cares, that’s the true miracle.

So the concept I would propose is that people need to think in terms of mediumless waves, which are the real and stable source of existence. Objects are not the carriers of waves, rather, pure waveforms which exist everywhere at once are the carriers of objects, which get temporarily distilled by our senses out of the eternal wave functions. The worlds of matter are cyclic and ephemeral, because these are the masculine manifestations which express missions of purpose – beneficial processes complete with beginnings and conclusions – for the love of the constant divine feminine source. A mediumless wave is like the archetypes or Platonic ideals from which all the instances of particular life situations get pulled and drawn, and to which they must return to make any sense. There is a realm of pure numbers and eternal relationships from which we originally come and to which we return after we work through our space-time playgrounds and tinker toy sets in the exercises of remembering and illustrating who we really are, were, and always shall be.

To have limited boundaries - to think I am here and you are there and for only so long - are working perceptions that locate universal wave functions into distinguishable bodies so we can focus on our personal choices and identities together in loving adventures. All those bizarre quantum effects like non-locality and parallel realities collapsing at the point of observation are actually quite normal and expectable; it’s the world of finite objects where people think miracles can’t happen for love that is really quite strange and contrived. People’s physical insecurities and astonishments come from putting the cart before the horse, from thinking that somehow all the transitory things of life are what is real and solid, while the abstract realms that get suggested and symbolized by material forms are somehow fleeting and unpredictable. The truth is quite the reverse, because the manifest God relies upon the unmanifest Goddess continually for regeneration into perfect forms from which to grow, learn, and love. The first identifiable objects of the mediumless waves behind everything are in fact our own souls, because each of us is a unique collection of resonant frequencies balanced to benefit all of creation, a fingerprint of unlimited potentials in essential services, a lovely and quirky individual personality of God that ready to be present and contribute to the growth of life at every point where it may precipitate out of the omniscient omnipresent energy of divine loving awareness. How do you think the angels can be everywhere they are needed, and the deities can help everyone simultaneously who calls on their assistance? There are no limits save love for those who have mastered time and space, because our nature is already to be the mediumless wave which is present at every possible point, ready to serve, share, and play joyfully with those who observe their own needs and desires to become more divine.

- Carl J. Schroeder, Monday March 25, 2013

http://www.facebook.com/HowToMakeHeavenOnEarth

“Remember, the Universe is still being created, by You!”

(my collage which sets on a background of the Pleiades star cluster the latest heat photograph of the universe when it was just 370,000 years old. The all-sky view was compiled from 7 years of microwave data taken by NASA's Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP), a spacecraft that scans radiation left over from the Big Bang. I’m partial to the Pleiades as one of my spiritual homes, since I relate to being what is called a starseed, that is a soul which did most of its growth on another planet before coming to Earth in order to assist from an objective memory of our ultimate human potentials here. Starseeds make great loyal wise friends but can be a little lonely, since they tend to not get stuck in the usual dramas and work through Earth challenges a bit too quickly and eccentrically for most people to comfortably understand them. Starseeds do well to own up to their differentness and stick together; don’t worry, it won’t make you love the Earth and your soulmates here any less, in fact you’ll be in a better position to make this the paradise you came here to help create for everyone’s benefit!)