tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19624728741633198232024-03-05T06:26:55.441-08:00New Earth LightLet the Light of New Earth show you the Way, to the good Life of Love that your Soul saved for You.Carl J. Schroederhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17051319009194913124noreply@blogger.comBlogger80125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1962472874163319823.post-58988644077106420792014-03-10T06:25:00.003-07:002014-03-10T06:33:57.205-07:00Victim ConsciousnessYou control your attitude to life, even when your life is controlled. Others may victimize you, but only you decide if you are the victim. When you get knocked down, you are the one who says whether you belong on the ground or standing up again. You say this by your many little actions and reactions, responses and choices. It doesn’t matter how long you’ve been down or how many times you tried to get up before, the next moment is always yours to create, bigger or smaller. Will you join the victims or set yourself free? This is the power of your eternal consciousness: to feel all your feelings and think all your thoughts and go further still, to have access to a larger picture, to take your option to reframe, to say where you’re coming from and where you’re going to. It is so because your eternality is the one thing that you cannot choose, which is good; this is God’s gift to you. No matter how long you’ve been asleep, one day you will wake up again.<br><br>
- Spirit to Carl J. Schroeder, Monday March 10, 2014; www.HowToMakeHeavenOnEarth.orgCarl J. Schroederhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17051319009194913124noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1962472874163319823.post-72321063032385562322014-02-28T19:04:00.001-08:002014-02-28T19:04:36.277-08:00Success and CooperationSLOGAN OF THE DAY: #1<br><br>
When you try to improve your internal state by changing your external reality first, then you will meet conflict and resistance.<br><br>
When you try to improve your external reality by changing your internal state first, then you will meet success and cooperation.<br><br>
- Carl J. Schroeder, Feb 28, 2014; www.HowToMakeHeavenOnEarth.org<br><br>
Explanation: I'm going to start sharing the daily slogans that come to me from Spirit, as an obvious way to make this inspirational website even more active, interesting, and helpful. I've been a little too perfectionist in holding back a lot of ideas until I make the complete essay or best poster to express them.<br><br>
Today's slogan refers to how reality will change only when it needs to, based on the changes you've already made inside. Too many people make the mistake of trying to make themselves feel and think better by changing the world around them. They quickly hit problems, and then conclude that the world is against them. But this is just how reality works, so you don't have to take it personally.<br><br>
Even when people make the internal changes that bring true peace and liberation, they may be surprised at how long remnants of the past still hang around. They think: "I felt such a big change in me, shouldn't the whole world reflect this overnight?" This apparent failure of reality to respond positively can cause people to doubt their personal transformations. They may even backslide and return to the security of fighting familiar old problems, which is always an option because we do have that free will.<br><br>
If you find a way to truly feel and think better, then hurray for you, this is real! When you're not reacting to situations the same way you used to, when you're responding with more compassion and insight to all of life, then you can be sure that you have truly changed. The reason why reality might not change as quickly and fully with you is because reality is highly efficient. Nature will not spend the energy of changing until it absolutely needs to, for example because you simply can't take any next step until something moves.<br><br>
If reality isn't changing overnight for you, ask yourself what really matters anyway. If you're not being stopped from working toward your goals, if there's another way around and more change would just be a matter of pride or convenience for you, then what you're really looking at is your own controlling ego. And if you stay in this place, you'll know, because more and more serious blockages will will start showing up, including people with obvious ego problems. At that point, you'll rest assured that you have not really changed, and you have more work to do to improve your internal state.<br><br>
Better to be anonymously successful than famously failing; better to have private success than public failure. Reality may not acknowledge you as much as your ego would prefer to feel secure, but you'll be able to continue on your way to ever rising levels of satisfaction with your personal life, which is after all where you really live. By mastering your internal state as the source of your own experience, you will enjoy amazing synchronicities, miracles of support, and the endless variety of great friends who share your deepest values across this garden universe.<br><br>
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(my photo of the Buddha statue in my backyard, warmed by the sun, rising out of the melting snow)Carl J. Schroederhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17051319009194913124noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1962472874163319823.post-11347913736170562452014-02-10T07:59:00.000-08:002014-02-10T07:59:19.307-08:00what happened to this blog and meI'm going to try a new attitude for this blog, since it's gone evidently fallow in the past year. In the beginning of 2013 I started my facebook project at www.HowToMakeHeavenOnEarth.org, which successfully resulted in a series of inspirational images, slogans, and essays. This blog got less and less attention, occasionally reposting some essays. As 2013 progressed my personal life became increasingly complex and challenging, until my public writing went dormant and I focussed on my own private journals and friendships (always a good refuge for the soul!)<br><br>
Now we're into February of 2014, and my late new year's resolution is to use this blog more for sharing some personal experiences like dreams and daily insights that I don't have time to turn into full essays. HowToMakeHeavenOnEarth will remain a place for polished presentations, and there have been some new essays in recent months, mostly leveraging on a backlog of inspirational photos and slogans I'd already done. I'll continue to re-post those essays here as well.<br><br>
My goal for 2014 is to re-establish myself in a new area of the United States to begin the second half of my life, having met my Chiron return (a fancy astrological way of saying middle age, LOL)<br><br>
Since this may well be a time for everyone to become more centered and focussed on their own life experiences and plans, I wish you all the best in your own process as well. May the blessings of a God-connected life be yours to know and enjoy, and may you find the supports, love, and guidance you need to maintain it through all of your own challenges.<br><br>
peace to all,<br>
Carl J. SchroederCarl J. Schroederhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17051319009194913124noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1962472874163319823.post-55698111861824758982013-08-11T10:00:00.002-07:002013-08-11T10:00:36.400-07:00Enter the AdultHere's a major essay on growing up that I posted yesterday to my facebook page <a href="http://www.howtomakeheavenonearth.org">How To Make Heaven On Earth</a>, and being so long belongs here in this blog as well. Enjoy!<br><br>
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<b>IMAGINE A LIFE THAT IS REAL</b>: As I get older, I learn more about the differences between what's fantasy and reality, and the differences between what's reality and real. Actually the lessons aren’t all that hard, but society doesn’t make them easy, with all kinds of distractions, misconceptions, and ego fodder to keep us busy for lifetimes with wayward companions. But since society is a product of the self (not really the other way around) I can see how I’m facing my own reluctances to grow up. Old habits die hard, as we tend to go kicking and screaming into that adulthood for which we need to give up on our perfect dreams born of simpler times. A big one: we’re never going to finally get that perfect parent figure who takes care of us, regardless of how much relabeling we do to not embarrass ourselves. “What, me want to be a child all of my life? Don’t be silly! Of course I’m not looking for a mother or father to reward me for being a good boy or girl, that’s ridiculous. No, I’m just expecting that if I follow the rules and do what I should, then government, God, employer, society, spouse, etcetera should meet all my needs and make me so happy. Love me in other words; is that too much to ask for? And if they’re not doing their part, if they’re messing me up, then I have every right to feel betrayed and afraid, helpless and hopeless, throw tantrums and blame, and play or work harder until they appreciate me and make everything better, right? Right? Oh wait. Um, never mind.”<br><br>
The job of children is to play to stretch their imagination and senses, not to be practical and run a life in a world they can’t yet understand – that’s what the adults around them are for. Unfortunately, most of us had parents who were themselves still children inside looking to be taken care of, with varying degrees of outward display of this fact. They were busy trying to get us to behave and be good for them, with little capacity to understand themselves much less understand us and teach us real self-love and self-care. So in ways that were subtle or obvious, the children had to be parents to the parents, in hopes of getting their needs met someday, and this pattern carries on into the rest of life. We develop all kinds of habits of trying to love to get love, rescue in order to be rescued, blame before we are blamed, indulge and compromise and wait, as we entertain ourselves in extended childhoods that consume the resources of a planet which increasingly needs to be wisely managed by a high-impact humanity that didn’t want to grow up.<br><br>
Those who act more responsibly than little kids tend to get stuck in the next phase of life, that of the adolescent, whose job it is to enjoy practicing adult responsibilities with no real abilities to follow through, only look good and fake it while they keep growing up. Teenagers can be incredibly sophisticated, able to display amazing talents and skills in theory which fall apart in practice, as they quickly cave in to inexperience, insecurities, peer pressures, and anxious defenses. Adolescents are adults in training, who need more validation, guidance, and love than ever, for a world that’s bigger and bolder than they dared to imagine, as encountered from within their own powerfully functional new bodies to match. <br><br>
So look around now and ask yourself, how many of those accomplishing people making it big today are really just overgrown teenagers still winging it through their grandiose plans and insatiable desires, able to get by until they can’t, quick to be imitative, rehearsed, competitive, idealizing, idolizing, avoidant, rebelling, judgmental, and compulsive for the attention that might make them feel as good as they hopefully look? Gosh, and what about me, as I go through the motions of a responsible adult life, doing great and enjoying adult pleasures even as I live in secret fears of what’s waiting for me around the next corner, hiding the fact that I’m more needy than ever and half the time wishing I could just be a child taken care of again!? Yes, sad to say there aren’t all that many fully reliable real adults living in the world today, as most people imagine and wish for more of what they had when they were younger, or more likely what they never got and no one but themselves can give it to them now. It’s time to grow up, in ways that will be more fun and satisfying than our hurt younger selves could have ever imagined in the dysfunctional training of the dangerous grups (an original Star Trek term for terminally ill insane grown-ups from whom the children had to hide and fear puberty). But to attain our overdue liberation we have to be willing to become realistic with our fantasies, and discover what was real all along.<br><br>
I’m reminded of a popular quote from that great American satirist and conscience prodder Kurt Vonnegut, who said "True terror is to wake up one morning and discover that your high school class is running the country." This snappy little barb is understandably funny and scary as a political favorite. But it’s also more poignant than most people realize, because it’s circumscribing the adolescent panic that each of us needs to feel and then ask ourselves why. It’s not enough to just point the finger of blame, because sooner or later that finger always points back to its owner, and we’re each responsible for our own reformation. We’re each members of any set that to our credit we may be pushing to leave. Vonnegut’s terror was his own at himself, as was dipping in to feel how much he’s been expected to grow up along with everyone else. If he had tuned into this planet’s spiritual adults and the incredible power of human evolution, Kurt would have been far more hopeful and grateful to be alive, but instead he couldn’t relate much beyond his own condemning high school superiority.<br><br>
Vonnegut’s dead, so I guess from a position outside of the set he can finally see why he felt the way he felt and said the things he said. Unfortunately, healing by dying is incomplete, that's why we have to go back again, to retrieve and relive the rest of ourself and hopefully get to a different end. In his past life Vonnegut was Mark Twain, a nearly identical legendary American author. Check it out, they’re dead ringers for each other, and constitute one of the more convincing no-brainer proofs for reincarnation. So we’re talking about a truth-telling soul here who’s been helplessly brilliant and scared for many lifetimes, not yet revealing his full inspirational potential to humankind. For all the good that he did (and he did a lot), Twain quotes remain the favorite of curmudgeons, atheists, conspiracists, and misanthropes everywhere, because they are so incredibly acerbic and indicting of human downfalls. <br><br>
I’ll never forget my shock at the degree of seething judgmental rage that a former coworker who idolized Twain would leak out like a trail everywhere he went, or perhaps even more alienating to me, how much everyone else admired this guy for his entertaining tales of world travel, political activism, and cultured knowledge that always ended badly in who was to blame for everything wrong. This quasi-friend of mine was also an incredible mirror to me, as I discovered synchronicities in our heritage going well back to German great grandfathers. The fellow is dead now from cancer, that modern pandemic of sublimated anger which changes us when we won’t change otherwise (Twain by the way died of a heart condition, and Vonnegut of a brain injury from falling down the front steps of his own home). Although he didn’t believe in an afterlife, I trust that my former coworker is learning his lessons now on the other side, with his own best friends and growth companions (they aren’t necessarily the same sets, you know).<br><br>
So, little kids with little toys play, to imagine the things that aren’t in front of them for some mastery, while adolescents are big enough to enjoy adult gear and immerse themselves in the feelings and thoughts that can blow them away. It’s all good, it only gets ugly when people don’t understand and can’t just keep moving along. God has a plan for us each to fully awaken, so God created nature as a kind of conveyer belt that will take us through the stages of development that we need to arrive into our full divine power. The more we get the help we each need to stay on the track, the more that every step of growing up is a safe, fun, eye-opening experience of love in training. Mistakes are manageable, good mentors find us to tell what things mean, we discover our skills in time to meet the most serious requirements, and change is the magical friend on the journey that always gets better. No wonder a free healthy child is wide-eyed with wonder and love, full of enthusiasm for a life full of learning! “Is that something new? Oh please yes, a new adventure, complete with more friends!”<br><br>
But the more we are burdened and shamed and attacked through the years by the ones who were scared because they never grew up, the more we have to make coping compromises of our own to survive. We may arrive into adulthood more dead than alive, crippled from reactions born of fear and ignorance, looking and feeling really bad from all the self-preserving defenses that we were advised to construct on the way. We become heavy and buried in our shields and armor: things like the merciless ego that says we're better (or worse) than anyone else, and beliefs that life is a senseless horror show, just take what you can and get out of here. The spiritual intention is to rise out of the muck when we're ready to clean ourselves off (like the lotus, you see), but it’s easy to see only junk and forget who we are. One day we look in the mirror and realize, oh shit, I’m no better than those I condemned for messing me up, and now I’m one of them. Oh sure I’m not exactly the same, I’ve got my own flavor and spin to my negativity. But I’m thinking and saying and too often doing the broken stuff too, and adding to the pain of the world. I’m a grup now, I can feel it; I’m a compulsive disease spreading germ of a human being. First they did it to me, now I’m doing it back and passing it on. I’m not fit to exist - that’s what you will think or feel like in despair - and in this state alone you are right, even if it is not all that you are.<br><br>
Stop! Stop whatever abuses you can wherever you can, let softness enter, and pray to something greater than you to be saved. Give it a try, dare find out what’s real. When you’re at the end of a long troubled road, the only antidote for so much shame is to start over, with the imagination of a child and the passion of an adolescent and the caring of a parent and the best and worst experiences of all three, but all working together now under the new hope of a spiritual adult. Imagine that God is real, and reality wasn’t just a cruel joke or mistake. There was a good reason buried for everything that happened, and in fact it’s still happening. Imagine that there is still a miraculous seed remaining at the heart of your tattered dreams that kept you alive, something more real and amazing than all of the misconceptions and pain that obscured your vision for most of your days that got you this far. Where there is life there is hope, and thank heavens you are still alive. Begin to imagine a real life, and be willing to be more grateful than surprised when the magic returns to make you divine, when yesterday’s failed hopes become today’s miracles in the light of a new and more real tomorrow.<br><br>
So, can we say yet what is real? Certainly not this tinker toy building block stuff that we call our reality; it’s so incredibly useful, but too flexible, too easily misunderstood and misused to guarantee that a good will come of it. That has been both the problem and the gift, that people have tried with their reality creations to fix the real outcomes for all participants, and they can’t. Everyone remains free to feel something different, think something different, go their own way - good or bad you can’t stop them from finding what they’re looking for. Reality is an empty container, a vessel waiting to be filled, a basket of props on a stage. What is your play, your theatre, your cue for a line? You make reality do what you want, you create your own reality.<br><br>
But energy, that's something else. Energy is real and persistent, hauntingly so. The patterns of meaning for you, the emotional experience you get from the things on parade, that is most real and lasting and true. What makes one person happy may make another one sad, or even what triggers happiness for you one day may cause you pain in tomorrow’s context (a most alarming situation for addictive personalities who seek to control their own pleasure buttons), but happy and sad are themselves absolute. It’s funny, people call them abstract, these energy states, and represent them with so-called concrete things that are in fact far less concrete or universal. Each individual passing through the same life situation is coming from and going to their own choices for what they want to experience, and while the degree can vary to which their goals become manifest or made visible for all to see and agree that is that, nobody can take your own experience from you. This means that while you may temporarily feel patterns from the impact of others - overlays of energy that can compel you to do things that won’t feel right for you - sooner or later you’ll let go the false and head for the true, homing in on the center of subjective experience that’s you.<br><br>
You have your own divine path of true feelings through everything, and that is why people who are discovering their spirituality get really into symbols and synchronicities and talk about incredibly subjective perceptions that are hard to explain to someone who isn’t having a similar experience. Of course, those who don’t get you can think you’re just making it up, because you look like the kids who imagine something that’s not there with their toys. But you know what’s real. The people who don’t understand are just looking at a different emotional experience, they’re in a different real place and phoning themselves in to you, having a telepresence in the shared forms of a reality that's been manufactured for us all to use. Are those people on TV really inside the box or up on the wall? Of course not, but you don’t have to know what studio they’re broadcasting from, or even when they recorded their show, to react and respond and get to know them here and now. <br><br>
Of course, the more you become real and self-aware in your own reality, the more you can filter out the effects of yourself, to guage and evaluate the consciousness of other people. This is commonly called getting past your own ego, and in the TV metaphor it means you can react less to the actions directed at you, and pay more attention to the broadcast quality, themes and agendas of the show, and whether it’s live or taped. Obviously if you’re yearning for a real conversation, you don’t just start talking to a movie or series rerun. You need a live two-way connection, a video conference that goes beyond watching the prescripted performances that adolescents will favor and hide themselves in. So this is when reality can become real, as you and a friend can both be in the same place emotionally, sharing energies, regardless for how far apart or close by your world says you are. The real universe is not limited to time and space, after all - distance is a measure of closeness in thought and feeling. You can be in the same room or across the galaxy, in the same human bodies or totally different forms, and still be right there together, sensing and touching and affecting each other.<br><br>
Imagine then, that imagination is where the real journey begins. Not all consciousnesses choose to grow physically, but the ones who do have done so for a very good reason. They know that a physical life was just the right help that they needed, the handle on what is real which they would require to take them all the way Home. So when you’re ready to embrace your own destiny and paradise, start where you are, and trust your decision to be alive at this time. You won’t be done with the set til you can make a good use of yourself. Your life may not turn exactly how you thought it would go, but that’s only because it can be so much better, by some measures of quality and depth that you hadn't considered before. The world is not simply mundane or profane – your every action on this planet is a sacred prayer, a ritual before God, a meditation on enlightenment, a dance of sympathetic magic, a resonant structure in which to become more alive with more love. You will not fully discover this however until you enter into the illusion itself, to make use of the unconscious tools that you buried there, to divinize and spiritualize not only yourself but the world around you. This is the pact that you made with God, this is the plan and the path that you set for yourself as a human being born unto Gaia.<br><br>
Imagine to find a real life. You conceive of a plan, you start putting together some pieces of your reality, and you see what comes alive to share a part of the journey with you. Keep that part, let go the rest, build upon what is most real and important to you. Notice that accessible reality is becoming much greater than just the current physical time and space that you’re in. The expanded realm for experience available to you as a human being who is in touch with your soul includes the past, present, and future, vast and varied worlds of consistent thoughts and feelings that intersect in some places with you, and other dimensions beyond the reach of your imagination today but which are waiting for you to perceive their effect. Angels are real, so is God, Goddess too. Spirit guides and fairies, dragons, friendly extraterrestrials, demons and devils to be avoided unless you have something to learn, teachers of all kinds and so very much more - all are as real as the next door neighbor on Earth who, by their own use of your shared reality to further their own choices for real energies, is calling into form more influences than they can fully understand but to which they are vulnerable, exposed, and open. You’re doing much the same thing as well, so keep perceiving and conceiving the many kinds and amounts of love around you. Set boundaries, make choices, feel your progress as you change. Don’t underestimate the power of what you can imagine and begin to make senses of, even if at times you must assess and redress the mistakes that you make in sorting through to connect so many ideals and ideas, shapes and forms. To err is human, to forgive and live and let live is divine.<br><br>
Don’t get sucked into the cults of groupies who say explicitly or implicitly there is no higher power and nothing beyond their own little world, when you can so easily know they are wrong. People for example who insist there is no afterlife or metaphysical realm have their own emotional reasons for saying so, perhaps even good ones as they focus themselves on what’s left to improve. You’re welcome to ride any bandwagons too, you just might want to jump off before they hit the wall hard. All systems have their limitations, which can be experienced as betrayal for what didn’t come or gratitude for what did, that is your choice. <br><br>
Modern technology is taking humanity for a great ride, and the benefits don’t have to end after the limits are known. There are those who think the internet isn’t just another window on the collective unconscious (when in fact people have always networked in their dreams and synchronicities for example), that cellphones aren’t just a way of focusing telepathy, and happiness and love are only the right mix of brain chemicals that we can and should engineer. Such people even think that robotic bodies will one day make them into immortals and gods, and until then they can wait to be saved by technology (unless it fails them just like all the other saviors they tried). These people don’t understand that they’re worshipping their tools of experience, but any technology can only give you more access to the unconscious spiritual powers you already have. Nothing is real unless it’s symbolic, so tapping into a technique or entertaining a vision is just the beginning of self-discovery. People are already immortal and gods, just not acting from a sustainable understanding yet to choose that much power to love. <br><br>
So then to balance in reaction come all the people of faith who condemn modern ways, who attack the science of bold humanity and say only God should have so much power, now we are surely doomed. And if you think I’m only talking about religious fundamentalists, think again – the new age has just as much dogma and prejudice against the useful technological realities of Earth’s spiritual evolution as the old churches they loathe to find themselves in (but past lives will take you into so many wonderful subjective places!) Well, now you can know better than all these extremes and more, as you tune into the real Spirit that’s driving the interconnected reality experiences of humanity growing up. It’s all good in the end, just different stages of development still unaware of themselves. There are angels in the cities as well as the countryside; there are devas of the higher orders ready to guide you through the hardest places and the longest detours you may find yourself on. There are ascended masters waiting for you in the heavenly realms, and some of them are even you in your own self-realized tomorrows.<br><br>
Imagine and begin to discover the truest seeds of what was real all along. It's okay to slip up and fall short, to not get the point for a while. If you can’t imagine a thing in some fashion, then you won’t find your way into the actual experience later. The real road may be winding and long, as what excites you at first may change and evolve, and you turn a corner to realize that you set your sight wrong. But this is the nature of the path that you’re on. From an unseen spark of motivating inspiration that's real and partly felt, you create something in your reality to carry the magic as best as it can, and you build upon that as far as it goes. Did you build upon sand or stone? Walls may tumble down to reveal what was real and lasting - if so, start again with what you can learn. Don’t get discouraged, keep the treasures you find for your next cornerstone, learn to design in alignment with God, keep to that humbling long winding road. Yes, there are some shorter cut paths that many will take, side routes from the truth that run straight to false promised ends, glamorous ways that are wide with indulgent leniency or narrow with harsh discipline. But those are the quick direct lies that sound very good but leave people aching, compulsive, and empty inside. Only the real unpredictable path of a spiritual learning adventure, the reality consequences filled with so many surprises (they’re meant to be good!) will lead you in the end to the end that never ends: your eternal life. Trust and seek, ye shall find. The feelings will grow until you will know, as you learn to be free in good Time itself, that old precious friend you have known for so long on your quest for the heaven in Earth. Sometimes you’re going home. Sometimes you’re coming home. And sometimes, you’re already Home. <br><br>
- Carl J. Schroeder, Saturday August 10, 2013<br><br>
www.HowToMakeHeavenOnEarth.org <br><br>
“Imagination is the doorway to perceiving what's real.”<br><br>
(This is the phrase that came to me to accompany my photo from the Renaissance faire at Hammond Castle, Gloucester MA, July 28, 2013. John Hays Hammond Jr. was an eccentric genius inventor who also fancied himself a monk so that in the 1920’s he built a medieval castle which he called his Abbey by the Sea (Abbadia Mare) from many real European artifacts to serve as his home and laboratory. Late at night he would sit in monk’s robes and read by candlelight there, his refuge in a storybook life. A close protégé of both Thomas Edison and Alexander Graham Bell (his remarkable family was friends with Nikola Tesla, the Wright brothers, and many more), Hammond is second only to Edison in number of patents, mostly in the realm of radio control which he pioneered (he ran the first radio controlled riderless ghost ship around the harbor to terrorize the local fishermen, which led to the US navy hiring him for torpedo guidance systems), but also in diverse areas such as the first synchronizations of sound and image for the movie industry’s new talkies, and controls for the large 10,000 pipe organ he specially designed to resonate and shake his beloved castle walls (he wrote “nothing can reincarnate their spirit except to walk through rooms in which they have lived” – but no, he’s not the Hammond of pipe organ fame). John remains a controversial figure, as most seriously he was accused of treason when his inventions showed up in enemy hands during WWII (seems an assistant was the spy, but John had compromised his reputation when he dealt with the likes of Mussolini to acquire his castle parts), and furthermore he often fed a large ego that was given to high-tech pranks on his many famous visitors which included presidents, scientists, artists, celebrities, and more (he especially loved it when Gershwin would come play his piano), plus he dabbled in the occult later in life (the castle could use an energy clearing, after thrilling too many ghost hunters from nearby Salem). When my own spiritual growth broke through nearly 16 years ago to a depth of imagination that included our past lives and many simultaneous dimensions, I was called by dreams and intuition to John’s castle for further guidance and inspiration. Eventually I came to understand that John and I are eternal colleagues, and things that he felt compelled to do in his lifetime contained reasons and meanings far deeper than he was able to comprehend, a limitation which people like me and Emanuel Swedenborg work to change (I’m not saying I was Swedenborg, only that John led me next to study with him). It is time for humanity to learn more of the purposes of history for the making of heaven on Earth. We are all in effect remotely guided from our own higher selves, a fact we come to understand and make use of as we move into that higher consciousness position for this New Age of power which John instrumentally assisted to usher and make visible. Thank you, old friend, I finally know which monk you are to me now, assisting me as you did to write my visions down!)<br><br><br><br>Carl J. Schroederhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17051319009194913124noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1962472874163319823.post-35771988928362152302013-07-07T19:50:00.002-07:002013-07-07T19:59:19.738-07:00Birth of a Nation, Birth of a WorldWell for me the action is mainly at my facebook page now at <a href=http://www.HowToMakeHeavenOnEarth.org>www.HowToMakeHeavenOnEarth.org</a>, and to demonstrate here's my July 4th posting that I didn't copy to this blog until 3 days later, oops! Personal life is very busy for me, and I continue to get tons of guidance and insights every day to help with the daily challenges. I then do my best to package and process these into the universally shareable inspirational images, quotes, and essays that facebook handles so well. The big breakthrough in the past couple of weeks was in fact to try facebook advertising for a few dollars a day. I just wasn't reaching as many people as my writings deserved to reach, so for the price of a coffee or two a day I'm now getting hundreds of new audience members a week, hurray! This was an easy sacrifice to make since I don't drink coffee (hey, I didn't say I was giving up chocolate). So enjoy and please spread the word, since the format seems to really be working, as I'm getting a response rate far above the industry average for click-throughs and conversions and all that marketing speak. It seems that How To Make Heaven On Earth is just what a lot of people have been looking for, which is a great sign for us all in addition to encouraging me with my writing in particular!<br><br>
In the following post, I decided to just let loose and spell out the perspective on the founding of the United States to which I have been given some insider insight due to my particular lineage. How many more fabulous stories await to be told and heard out there in the awakening world truly excites and humbles me, because wow, Earth has a very rich spiritual history and amazing reasons for why everything went the way it did and still remains destined to work out just fine! What a great blessed time to be alive we can appreciate consciously now!<br><br>
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<b>REVOLUTIONARY IDEAS</b>: With people and nations, certain beliefs when implemented will be found to advance the freedom of souls to show themselves in human form, as evidenced by explosions of prosperity for all with the joyful abundances of creativity, love, and awakened dreams for an ever-expanding future. We do well to recognize and celebrate such triumphs of Heaven on Earth wherever they are to be found, as well as to not become complacent and superior in the ways that will cause us to neglect and overlook our own further progress to be made. The Spirit of Revolution challenges us all to keep growing, keep going, keep sharing the ideas that might make the world a better place, and keep cleaning the personal house of those limitations that would make all human life any less the miracle of divine presence that truly it is. God is our love, God is our light, and together we always intended to make the God in All proud.<br><br>
The fourth of July has become celebrated as one of the great watersheds for the progress of human civilization, as a new nation was radically and boldly declared upon principles for equality and democracy which to this day continue to be tested. Looking back now, it was far from a given that the upstart United States of America could or would thrive as it has, and still it is taking hundreds of years to march those founding ideals through the cultural assumptions which threaten to corrode and destroy human grace on the ground. The devil has truly been in the details, as we hitched our wagons to a star only to discover where so bright a star leads. Thomas Jefferson was good enough to pen for all time in the Declaration of Independence that “All men are created equal”, even as he relied upon black slaves in Virginia to keep the home fires burning. Jefferson’s soul was surely foreseeing the freedom for all humanity, but his ego was looking at his white male colleagues of the Second Continental Congress in Philadelphia, and thus Jefferson the man wasn’t about to reach beyond the typical language of his time to explicitly include women in a grander vision for equality in representation, much less clarify the color of equal skin. A precipitous civil war had to be fought and won in the next century, and a suffrage movement in the next after that, for race and gender to secure by constitutional amendments their originally implied voting rights, and still the politics of bias rage on. Where were you born? How much money did your parents make? What’s the name of your God? Which gender do you love? How many handicaps or illnesses do you have in your genes? Questions like these get asked to put shame on the questioned when it is so often the questioner who carries the stain. There is a deep sadness in the soul of those who cannot see the greatness in another human form that differs too much from their own, because truly the refusal to allow diversity comes from the deepest places of self-ignorance and self-loathing. When we fully know, trust, and rejoice in our sacred identities, we cannot wait to share so much love. Each of us has the greatness of a soul that we will be so glad to find out and let out, and that greatness is to be enjoyed in a context of ever more love. It just takes time to open our eyes to the Self that contains the God within All, and how uniquely it does its own job within a world of support and courageous applause.<br><br>
Thomas Jefferson - who became so famous as the author of his nation’s most inspiring birth certificate, and then succeeded his friend and colleague John Adams as the third president - truly stood on the shoulders of giants for how far he was to be seen, and still by his ego he fell with consequences that resound to this day. I speak in reference to a little known history of these United States, from a lineage of open secrets which wait to be discovered as the tides of time turn back the pages to the roots of our country’s limitations as both a great leader and great intimidator (tides, pages, and roots - aren't mixed metaphors fun?) We each bear a tremendous privilege and burden in this country, to continue to responsibly enjoy and extend a prosperity of the soul which understands the strengths and weaknesses of all human positions. We cannot afford to sit on our laurels for the torch of ideals that we carry. For the dignity of all that we have gotten right, we must also see that much more clearly just what we got wrong, and learn ever more from ourselves in the light of others. <br><br>
The very phrase that perhaps started it all, the words called an immortal declaration of the most singular importance as predictor for the outcome of the newly United States and indeed for a resulting whole world which so often refers to and borrows the quote to claim more human rights, was not Jefferson’s own phrase after all! He got it from his neighbor and friend in philosophical conversations, an Italian doctor named Philip Mazzei. It is documented that Mazzei said and wrote “All men are created equal” before Jefferson, and Mazzei went on to play key behind-the-scenes roles for the American Revolution, including the dangerous acquiring of arms. But Mazzei is not remembered now with any of the founding fathers, despite his enormous contribution and having risked life and limb for his new homeland. Perhaps because he remained at heart so European, and returned to Europe as a tireless unofficial ambassador for American ideas and institutions, writing a first history of the American Revolution that was published in France before finally he died in Italy, therefore Mazzei remains too complex and cosmopolitan a figure to rank in the popular imagination with such homespun folk heroes as Americans might prefer to align themselves with. But Mazzei’s time yet may be coming for a new global age that embraces its world roots past and present, along with the matriarchal Iroquois nation whose successful confederation, the “League of Peace and Power”, is thought to have influenced the founding fathers as well as any Euro philosophies. The principles of these human rights thrive to this day, for some if not all human beings. In the future, the Great Spirit of All Souls shall be known and freely distributed in the greatness of all humankind, by the kindness of all great humans.<br><br>
The stories of Mazzei, Iroquois, abolitionists, suffragists and more, are inspiring as objective fact, well understood if not widely known. And still we can go deeper behind the sacred curtains of our shared histories to reveal more of what tomorrow holds for today. John Adams, our second president after George Washington, has been restored in recent times to his fuller place as perhaps the most critical founding father of them all. A Boston lawyer and farmer, Adams established himself early on as a figure of unswerving commitment to unpopular ideals, with tremendous consequences for a brighter future for us all. After the Boston massacre in which the British army fired in panic upon an increasingly threatening crowd of colonial protesters - an outrage which became the most important foreshadowing for the American Revolution five years later - Adams shocked Boston by successfully defending the soldiers and getting most of them acquitted. Yet this principled early position of Adams indicated no love of British rule, and he further amazed everyone by ultimately becoming the most ardent supporter and engineer of our secession from England, as he argued tirelessly in the Philadelphia congress against those who hoped to avoid bloodshed at the cost of liberty. Adams further knew, intuitively and logically, that he was not the right man to pen the Declaration, and so he chose the southerner Thomas Jefferson, in a most fateful move of his personal life. For it turns out that not only was Jefferson the right man for the job, but the right soul as well. What few can understand but someday all people will, is that Jefferson and Adams were twin souls (also called dipole souls), in that phenomenon by which God creates souls in balanced pairs to accomplish the greatest works as needed by their times when reunited in the reincarnating life. Together, the transcendent soul partnership of Adams and Jefferson jumpstarted a fantastic new nation, served as the second and third presidents to follow the country’s first hero general George Washington, and then became bitter political rivals on different sides of their own idealism, a split which echoes in the Republican versus Democratic partisanship that threatens to gridlock and make irrelevant a great nation to this day. <br><br>
I for one do not believe that the wounds of our country will be healed until the deepest soul level of all that has happened in the chronicles of human self-ignorance comes to the greatest light, and so I speak the unspeakable here. Twin souls are a fact of God’s Creation which must be understood, once and for all, along with reincarnation and the truth of a manifest destiny which NEVER offered the rights of one people to slaughter another. I sing the Ghost Dance in my own special way, I still shed my own tears on the trail of so many. The fact is that twin souls birth nations and universes, and twins who do not know themselves can do both incredible love and damage. This is no airy fairy new age romantic dribble of soulmates in love for which I speak - I’m sorry but this is too real to be misread in that way. Jefferson and Adams reconnected and forgave each other in the last years of their life, and died miles apart yet within hours on July 4, 1826. Now that’s soul romance! And the war on terror we suffer today, for which the two parties pose for political clout at the cost of true liberty? Ah, that would be the legacy of even more divergent twin souls, in the needs and fears of forgiving their karma. Think the nemeses who discover and define each other’s life paths: Bush Sr./Saddam Hussein, Bush Jr./Osama Bin Laden. Yes, this is a hugely controversial subject and many would say wholly unprovable. It is not my life’s work to detail these things after all, but rather the work of John Adams in his current reincarnated form. Dr. Walter Semkiw is the spitting image of our second president, and he is back this time not to found just a new nation for human equality but a new global society built on the justice of all human souls. The good doctor works with his friend and the famous psychic Kevin Ryerson, who began his career helping Shirley Maclaine to go out on a limb (Ryerson is not Jefferson if that was implied, as the Jefferson/Adams rift continues to this day). Together Walter and Kevin are revealing the principles and continuing lineages of reincarnating soul lines, and not for the shock appeal of who might be Jesus or Hitler or even Michael Jackson as so many might want to gossip about, but as I see it to (1) demonstrate and prove beyond any reasonable doubt that reincarnation is real, (2) prod and inspire important reincarnations to work together and step up to the plate of their fullest potentials in a greater aura of public support, and, perhaps most beautifully, (3) make war obsolete and ensure world peace for all time, by teaching everyone that the ethnicity or culture you demonize and slaughter today is, by the laws of karma, where you will be reborn tomorrow. Yes, humanity is great and equal beyond any human measure or abilities to manipulate, so let’s go into that night that becomes a new dawn together.<br><br>
You can read more about Dr. Semkiw’s work in his books beginning with “Return of the Revolutionaries” and at his website at <a href="http://www.IISIS.net">www.IISIS.net</a>. If you’ve seen the new excellent documentaries on John Adams, you’ll recognize perhaps the same brilliant, stubborn, idealistic, and visionary soul at work who is at times self-promoting but usually not, because all is done for the sake of a cause. Sticking his neck out so far into metaphysics has been tough for a pragmatist such as Walter, so he continues to experiment for the right balance of factual and inspirational presentation, and what impressions you’ll find will be your own. Once, Walter had the distinction of being featured in an article by Newsweek, where all of his efforts to explain reincarnation were turned into an example of what ridiculous things even educated people can believe in today’s America. Still, the publicity worked out in his favor (and Newsweek’s youtube clip is decent, enjoy at <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ltq_KE0KCP4">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ltq_KE0KCP4</a>). So it’ll be fun to see where Walter goes in the coming years, along with so many other amazing schools of thought and soul institution at work in the world today to which I am not particularly privy. I’m not claiming to see the total picture, and the only reason why I personally tune into and stump for Walter is because he was the head of the church in the 12th century who authorized my abilities to publish and speak when I was Hildegard of Bingen. I have a compatible destiny to Walter, to highlight and educate more of the world for the sources and effects of soul inspiration, so I remain forever grateful to the greater mission for human equality and justice that we can both labor in. We’ve come a long way from the limitations of earlier times and cultures, and overcome many of our own karmic obstacles to seeing what equality can truly mean, so I feel pretty good even in the human doubts for what I must say in the matter.<br><br>
Please forgive me, or Walter, or anyone else here on this ascending planet of such fearfully hopeful unprecedented times, if good intentions find clumsy implementations for revolutionary ideas. I’m sure it will offend some people to read this my missive that turns from apparent standard patriotism, to revisionist history, to metaphysical speculation, to possible ego promotion. But this is a really big lifetime for us all to take the chances that we can believe in, and to open up to each other’s revolutions of mind, as we find the heart behind the soul’s intent that brought us this far. With any luck and guidance and kindness to cover, we will stand on the shoulders of giants together as we gaze out to the furthest horizons of Heaven on Earth, and contemplate what it still can mean to read, write, and say “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all human beings are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”<br><br>
- Carl J. Schroeder, July 4, 2013<br><br>
<a href="http://www.HowToMakeHeavenOnEarth.org">www.HowToMakeHeavenOnEarth.org</a><br><br>
(my photo collage of US Flag Backlit by Jnn13 and San Diego Fireworks by Jon Sullivan, courtesy Wikipedia, and the first famous sentence of the United States Declaration of Independence, adopted by the Continental Congress on July 4, 1776, with the single modification by me to clarify that “all men” is outmoded language for “all human beings”.)<br><br>
Carl J. Schroederhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17051319009194913124noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1962472874163319823.post-51772558625924971902013-05-07T07:16:00.000-07:002013-05-07T10:56:15.535-07:00latest advice on twin soulsSince I made a blog and facebook post on the topic, some wonderful people have been emailing me for advice on the concept of twin souls. They are in anguish, or at least confusion, over meeting someone so spiritually significant to them that they wonder if that is their twin soul, and whether it is supposed to work out (because it isn't, ouch!) I truly appreciate everyone who writes me this way, and because I'm so deep in my own process they may or may not get a quick reply depending on when they catch me.<br><br>
So first of all I want to say to everyone who writes me or considers writing, thank you, because you're absolutely right to focus on such an emotionally and spiritually important issue that you just know and feel the opportunity to be more alive and real from the depths of your own immortal soul! That you take the space to have some response to the experience, and further allow my writing to help validate and focus you, is so beautiful and important to your growth and the health of the whole world. Really, it's that big of a deal! And because it's such a big deal, you do want to find the right response to move your life forward, and not get caught in the kind of under-reactions and over-reactions that have plagued twin souls for eons on this planet (and others as well!). You have a golden lifetime invitation to handle something with a mastery you have not seen before in your journeys of self-realization, and this feeds directly into why you're here after all, in a body on this Earth at this momentous time. You're here to both love and serve, and to help others love and serve by giving them the chance to give those gifts to you, which are even more of what you need and must first give to yourself. This is the reciprocity of the life divine discovering itself, so it is that you are love's only seed, as you prime the pump, and you begin the process.<br><br>
(for a most wonderful heart-centering refresher, here's <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zxSTzSEiZ2c">The Rose by Bette Midler</a>)<br><br>
I invite you therefore to express all you need to express from your soul-love experience without getting overly committed to reactions. You can liberate yourself through reflective activities such as art, meditations, talking to yourself or pets or God, and in many forms of journaling. If it helps, you can absolutely write to me as well! Sometimes having the right audience/listener/friend is just what you needed and makes all the difference. Just be sure then to let that energy of your expression and self-attention settle in, so you can re-read what you write, and you can be the one to immediately benefit from feeling more of your own soul showing itself. Then you can edit your letter and/or hit the send button, and you'll be in a good position to observe the energetic effects of putting yourself out there for someone else to see.<br><br>
I am very very accepting and appreciating of twin soul experiences, so if you feel something really bad from writing me you can rest assured that I'm not thinking such things of you, but rather it's some invalidating voice from your past, or some internalized critic, or some other psychic pressure to intimidate you from finding your truth. A whiplash from being vulnerable may come quickly or over time, especially if the doubts eat at you because I don't visibly reply to your letter right away, which as I said can happen for reasons that are definitely not about you having made a mistake to write me. As a human being, I'm limited in my response-abilities. As a soul, I have many ways to comfort, befriend, and guide, as do we all. You can for example call upon my "past" life as St. Hildegard, which is not only in the past because she is absolutely active in the world energetically today, and doing far more than me as Carl can do from my current situation (trying to run my life, write a book, things like that).<br><br>
What I'm suggesting here is a general principle for healthy growth, to be self-observing and self-supporting so you can let a reasonable action be done and invite the reality around you to respond as it will. It's a reasonable action to write to me from your heart on the most precious topic of twin souls and soul relationships, because I have spent lifetimes mapping the depths of those energies to hold the space for human beings to realize their best intentions. You deserve to experience being proud and centered in what you say and do, to know and feel that you did something well, so then you'll be prepared to let the world around you go its own way and see what happens next in response to your solid self-esteem. All of life's events, from the most direct and loving that we want to cherish forever as a springboard to future growth, to the most unloving and challenging that we need to master and leave behind as not worth repeating, can then be richly informative for your total growth process.<br><br>
Does that make sense? This is the attitude and approach we all need to have in life, to release karma and become free, so the universe can lead us to the most directly supportive places for us, which is where we most belong. So for example, if you decide to indeed send me your emotionally urgent letter, you won't take it personally if I respond quickly or slowly depending on when you catch me in my own process, and you'll be able to feel the soul support that I absolutely and immediately have for you energetically. My soul, just like your own, does amazing things that I just catch glimpses of in the magic synchronicities and sensations of life's infinity. <br><br>
I get a lot of dreams for example of meeting people who feel new to me, and exchanging some words and symbols before moving back into my own psychic territory. I can see the signs that this person was not just an aspect of myself but someone objective in the outer world, and I may not know who exactly for a long time, if ever. That's the collective unconscious at work, and it has a vast light side as well as that tedious dark side that feeds the nightmares of so many people who are afraid of their own growth. Your energy is your own bubble that always protects and guides you, so you will increasingly operate only on the light side as you cleanse your mind through the lessons of a loving life. Of course I also interact with sides of my own soul (such as Hildegard), but there are solid clues for when I am connecting with someone outside of myself, and that is when I often only know that my spirit was helping someone, and in turn they were helping me. After all, in every true exchange of caring and healing, there is growth on both sides. The best healers know how to receive healing when they give healing, to let the lifeforce flow within healthy limits for everyone, and I am always striving to be both student and teacher of the greater universe.<br><br>
With this attitude then, I offer below something of a composite form-letter I've written to people who arrive asking for comfort and ideas about their soul twin/mate/flame challenges. I'll probably end up sending this verbatim in future replies along with any specific perceptions I get when I read a letter to me. Having this resource handy now will help me to respond more quickly to everyone, including readers of this blog post who wish to benefit more anonymously and energetically. I felt good from writing this and even better explaining it here now, because it's so much more than just an impersonal form letter to me! <br><br>
Hope that makes sense, and many blessings to us all on this lovely planet we live together on! Thank you Gaia, God and Goddess cocreating in majestic form!<br> - (Carl)<br><br>
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Thank you for your email asking for some guidance with your twin soul experience. I apologize for not replying sooner, but I continue to be very busy making my own progress in this and other areas. Human spiritual growth is certainly intense and complex, isn't it!?<br><br>
Have you read the two main essays I have posted on the topic?<br><br>
<a href="http://newearthlight.blogspot.com/2011/08/surviving-twin-flame.html">http://newearthlight.blogspot.com/2011/08/surviving-twin-flame.html</a><br><br>
<a href="http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=547907035250147&set=a.50866038\9174812.116965.508632602510924&type=1&theater">http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=547907035250147&set=a.50866038\9174812.116965.508632602510924&type=1&theater</a><br>
(from <a href="http://www.HowToMakeHeavenOnEarth.org">HowToMakeHeavenOnEarth.org</a>)<br><br>
I completely understand and sympathize with the intensity of the twin soul experience, especially from the point of view of the twin who is more interested in making the relationship work. Although the souls of the twins will always work together unconsciously and psychically, very few twin souls in their conscious human personalities will be both able and willing to stay together in a cooperative loving way. This is because of their nature, that twin souls are always connected in values but always holding an opposite balance for how to live those values. So for example when one is in a more feminine relationship oriented focus, the other is in a more masculine career oriented focus. Of course the masculine and feminine energies of creation belong together and work best united in harmony, but It takes great maturity for the inner balance of each person to make possible a human twin soul pair who is in outer balance. And even then, that outer balance could reveal the twin soul pair were made to be great friends and colleagues, not necessarily romantic. There are many kinds of love after all, as I discuss here: <a href="http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=559843474056503&set=a.508660389174812.116965.508632602510924&type=1&theater">http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=559843474056503&set=a.508660389174812.116965.508632602510924&type=1&theater</a><br><br>
The twin soul connection is so amazing and inspiring that many people like to assume it means the ultimate romance, but that is just not true and can cause endless suffering if you try to enforce that relationship. What the twin means is the ultimate reminder of our soul love and mission, which each person then has the free will to avoid, follow or corrupt as they choose. One characteristic of twin souls is just that they define each other and become remembered together, but that connection can take many forms. I only know of one good example of a successful twin soul romantic couple, and that was the 19th century poets Robert and Elizabeth Browning (who did not reincarnate as John Lennon and Yoko Ono even though Lennon and Ono thought they were the Brownings, probably because they wanted to be in that energy). Even the most mature twin souls who might be a couple more often choose to be platonic colleagues in a mission, such as the lifelong spiritual teachers Sri Aurobindo and Mirra Alfassa.<br><br>
Many other twin souls who accomplish great things together will choose differences of age and gender that disqualify them from romantic relationship, such as Jesus and his mother Mary who were twin souls (Mary Magdalene was a twin flame, to be discussed below). John Adams and Thomas Jefferson were twin souls who were vital to founding the United States together, then they became political enemies and only reconnected later in life (they died within hours of each other on July 4, 1826, now isn't that romantic?). Many famous twin souls can't live with each other and can't live without each other, like Liz Taylor and Richard Burton who dramatically created and loved together intermittently. Other famous twin souls spark only hatred and fear for each other's different sides of life, becoming infamous lifelong enemies who drag many others into their personal feud, such as George Bush Sr. and Saddam Hussein, and George Bush Jr. and Osama Bin Laden. Boy, aren't they going to be surprised and embarrassed in the afterlife!<br><br>
So you see, the twin soul connection does NOT spell ultimate romance at all, and the New Age is doing you a great disservice to push you to think such things. Many many people are destined to experience their twin soul as some kind of huge ultimate wake-up call to remember divine love and grow spiritually, which is especially needed in today's ascending world. This often results in a brief experiment to be together as a couple that ends rather badly with someone running away, even to the point of one person dying just to force the surviving twin to get on with their newly affected life (which will carry the imprinted soul mission of both twins). So if you can always carry with you even some joyful gratitude from having met your twin, and manage to survive the separation with some hope of finding even more meaning and happiness in your life, then you can count yourself lucky, because that was the goal and too many people can't even open up to that possibility!<br><br>
If you are suffering from romantic longings for your twin soul who has become unavailable in some way, you must look at your own inner balance of masculine and feminine energies. You must become a more complete and whole being in yourself. Remember, even before you entered all of your realities with your twin and became one of a pair, you were a complete image of the creator mother father God, the generative united God and Goddess partnership. You then chose your twin for the energetic support to enter into manifested lifetimes, even when most of those lifetimes would never meet the twin in body and you would only remain psychically connected. Now if you have met your twin in body and felt that original spark of limitless love only to become stuck and unable to create any further with them, then you must dig deeper into your divine origins and choose to create from more sides of yourself, to build your self-relationship which can then connect with everyone and everything with more love.<br><br>
There is a concept in Theosophy of the Monad which is even closer to the divine All Source than your human Soul, so In effect you have two levels of your soul. There is the outer soul of your human experiences, and this is where you and God began creating yourself with your twin soul as your creation partner. Then there is the inner soul of your wholeness before you ever became human or entered into any realities, and this is the Monad state to which you must return. From this level you can recreate yourself, reinvent yourself, to begin again without depending on your twin's support of you. Your twin will continue to "haunt" you for a while, as deeper memories and feelings are uncovered where you had built up your soul in relation to them. But if you are willing to go forward and discover more of your self, each revisiting of your twin soul connection will result in a beautiful blessing from their spirit to live on and let them go their own way, for the love of both of you. Remember, there doesn't have to be any shame or mistake in twin souls hitting their limits as creation partners - there is no lasting should have, only lingering could have. With God's help, you each simply did your best to start growing with the right individual before you were fully conscious to know what you were doing, and thus free will meant that even after starting from the perfect divine plan you had that potential to grow apart, individually and together, and thus you did. The universe has fundamental unpredictability, called chaoticity, so only the fully realized consciousness can make a guarantee to work with whatever happens to endure with all good intentions manifested sooner or later, in the flexibility of respect for all other life paths under development.<br><br>
The fully realized consciousness will thus begin your Monad super-consciousness, from which you can become your own best partner even as you seek a replacement for your twin soul. A divinely appropriate replacement for the twin will be someone so parallel to your growth that together you can consciously maintain the decision to go forward together as twin flames, forever dancing in deliberately paced and matching steps for the joys of synergy, that magic of becoming far more than the sum of parts. Your new soul partner will be more whole and right for you than your twin soul ever was, because they will be able to choose you as creation mate with infinitely more commitment and vision than your pre-conscious twin soul could offer you. To find your twin flame, you can in effect enter a period of dating from your soul, as you meet and evaluate twin flame candidates, and this path will take you far beyond your twin into amazing new growth lessons for how much more love there is to discover between you and the entire universe. <br><br>
This potential to so deeply reinvent the Self for more freedom to manifest the inner soul is rarely hinted at even in the most esoteric literature, but one reference appears to be in the Michael teachings, a collective channeled entity who since the 1970's has been popular for a soul-based personality system that includes seven soul ages and seven archetypal soul function roles. The Michael system's equivalent of the twin soul is called the "essence twin", and in a "grand cycle" our soul can fundamentally reorganize our relationships to other souls in order to explore creation with a new essence twin and other partner types. I can recommend the Michael teachings for comparing the general terminology to your own experiences, but with some caveats including that for some reason even as Michael likes to get very detailed "he" also encourages many people to channel "him" independently, so there is a quality control issue as different Michael sources will disagree over many specifics including individual soul personality charts.<br><br>
Ultimately, you will know you are succeeding when your twin soul with whom you first thought and felt you could not live without, becomes more and more like the first teen love of your soul's development, with whom you practiced the skills of soul relationship that you went on to master as an adult. You will always treasure your twin soul memories as foundational to your discovery of who you really are, and at the same time you would never dream of going back to them because you've become so much more than they could ever support and sustain. Any desire for a person who isn't right for you, whether your twin soul or some other projection of an ideal, will naturally fade when you really tune into the energy of your needs and see how much more you can be there for yourself, and by extension, someone else could be who is truly matching with your growth and thus able to share your self-partnering experience in a glorious manifestation of both your souls co-creating skillfully in boundless joy and gratitude.<br><br>
Think about it, watch what happens in your life as you consider these possibilities, and good luck! You can watch my video lecture on how to be more aware of your own feminine and masculine energies here:<br><br>
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MWK00DSHBCo">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MWK00DSHBCo</a><br><br>
Feel free to write me more if that helps you to organize your thoughts, just be sure to read what you write so you can grow from the space and not be dependent on me replying too quickly, which I may not be able to do. If and when you make significant progress in developing beyond your twin, I am certainly interested in hearing what works for you and how things go.<br><br>
many blessings,<br>
Carl: returnofhildegard/at/gmail/dot-com (spelled out a little to stop spammers)
<hr><br><br>Carl J. Schroederhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17051319009194913124noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1962472874163319823.post-18039953179229573552013-03-31T22:42:00.001-07:002013-03-31T22:47:58.016-07:00an Easter Sunday renewal of Life!<img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhy0RDH7UjCmxXyYZK-wShOTCaMOkNBAdEoT3lZXm7MxUYPjON531CDH5mCGaat17kKeU6DcAOXncgocHPfe_NO9YixHu9zj751EUf01nALT0gzHWA3jSw0FIVcyNE1X1ui1ZSO5lQ2IKo/s320/20130331-wisdom-of-desire-org.jpg" width=415 /><br><br>
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.<br><br>
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.<br><br>
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? <br><br>
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.<br><br>
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. <br><br>
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.<br><br>
- Carl J. Schroeder, Easter Sunday March 31, 2013<br><br>
<a href="http://www.facebook.com/HowToMakeHeavenOnEarth">http://www.facebook.com/HowToMakeHeavenOnEarth</a><br><br>
“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.”<br><br>
(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.)<br><br>Carl J. Schroederhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17051319009194913124noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1962472874163319823.post-29777836597459753212013-03-25T20:39:00.001-07:002013-03-25T20:39:09.076-07:00A New CreationHappy 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...<br><br>
<img align=center border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj28DKpqxtbrKvU4HS03ypSgsulbYS3nlNFdjhdrLKiXHwJCjIgX6iYMc_MND90erqtxAqikCPgkovuvZYwkpjGkhlCmNinrozDkeLOv8AXl0IUfFbtvGY4gcZbZZKgm-6_XnC4uQaRk44/s320/20130324-created-by-you-org.jpg" /><br><br>
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.<br><br>
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.<br><br>
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.<br><br>
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.<br><br>
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.<br><br>
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. <br><br>
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.<br><br>
- Carl J. Schroeder, Monday March 25, 2013<br><br>
http://www.facebook.com/HowToMakeHeavenOnEarth<br><br>
“Remember, the Universe is still being created, by You!”<br><br>
(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!)<br><br><br><br>
Carl J. Schroederhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17051319009194913124noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1962472874163319823.post-91461812702484472372013-02-01T12:17:00.002-08:002013-02-01T12:17:18.398-08:00Congrats Kerry/Jackson!Congratulations to John Kerry our new Secretary of State, who was this week easily confirmed across party lines and widely applauded after 28 years of serving Massachusetts superbly in the US senate! Here's a very <a href="http://bostonglobe.com/news/nation/2013/02/01/john-kerry-now-known-secretary-reflects-his-political-journey/Q73YnFOiYAW4qrBl9cAIyO/story.html">interesting article</a>, his last local interview as senator, as he gets to reminisce and chat in ways that he rarely has time for. He talks about how he's matured over the years, having no regrets for his initial rash entry into politics to oppose the Vietnam war in which he served. Kerry hints at how much he's accomplished since then that no one even knows, including being so proud of his "finest legislation" which is on climate change and remains to be passed, if ever.<br><br>
Kerry also laments modern politics, which he interestingly says suffers from the hyperconnectedness of social media. Politicians are actually too focused now on continual constituency feedback and arms-length electronic communication, so that face to face negotiating skills are weak and everyone hardens into their positions. I can imagine his point - backroom dealmaking didn't have to be a bad thing, it got things done and could just as well be for social good, such as the 13 Amendment which took a lot of inside politics to achieve as seen in the new movie "Lincoln". It used to be that politicians got elected and then could focus on their agendas, which depended on the character of the person of course. More political accountability was needed for sure, but now it's so rampant and shallow that nobody wants to do or say anything that might get tweeted and blogged instantly, go viral on youtube and facebook, and tank their career. Human beings have to take risks to evolve their thinking when they must live together. Could distance hypermedia actually have a negative effect on responsibility by never letting up the pressure to please the home party, while never really bringing opposing views into close proximity? It's too easy to praise or insult by email, much harder when actually in the same room with someone. How much do you use the internet to find enough people to agree with you that you feel safe to dismiss and ignore those who don't?<br><br>
btw it appears that John Kerry is the reincarnation of Andrew Jackson, 7th President to the United States and the guy on the 20 dollar bill. Just look at that face, you'd recognize the long features and chin and big brow anywhere! And there are very similar life narratives of being a war hero who is both profoundly patriotic and willing to question authority in ways that the pedants successfully punish, but in the end he is widely understood to be a great leader of integrity and intelligence. Rachel Jackson is also Teresa Heinz, so there's a returning love story of mutual admiration and support here. I just love it when souls make themselves knowable, don't you?!<br><br>Carl J. Schroederhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17051319009194913124noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1962472874163319823.post-54943568222757650932013-02-01T06:50:00.000-08:002013-02-01T06:53:34.359-08:00How To Make Heaven On EarthI'm so excited about my fantastic new facebook page of daily inspirations called <a href="http://www.facebook.com/HowToMakeHeavenOnEarth">"How to Make Heaven on Earth</a>!" I suddenly got the vision to start it on January 12, and soon realized how much I was committing myself to. It's turning out to be a lot of work but the energy keeps coming, I just love the balance of image and word that then opens up into a wonderful format for deep channeled messages. I've had dreams about how important this is as a structure for people to visit from all over the world, like a gallery of spiritual art exhibits made from a combination of pop art, religious icons, and crystals. So please Like it and spread the word, thanks! <br><br>
Here's last night's message to start the new month courageously:<br><br><br>
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<b>COURAGE</b>: There is none among us who can say that all of what life has brought to our embrace is exactly what we expected, preferred, or even asked for. Yet the ability to make that embrace, to accept what is and transform it with our bold presence and love into the very best that we can imagine, often becomes the mark of our greatest skill, the essence of our courage and beauty as human beings to not only survive but thrive in this world and beyond. How is it that the challenge to face what we have not envisioned, when visioning is our deep will and strength, can be such a source of growth input for us?<br><br>
It turns out that how we live whatever we live is where our power and uniqueness as a child of the infinite spirit begins. As the old saying goes, it’s not what you have in life, it’s what you do with it. The initiating Goddess principle dwells in that magic which can truly accept and care for whatever life brings, not from any weakness of will to assert the self, but rather from the primordial authority to call forth that which needs love. God then becomes the companion energy which gives us only as much as we will be able to handle, so *trust*, and so learn to love and become divine in the presence of. It is not that God wishes us struggle, as we struggle in life’s complications. It is rather that our mastery of living and loving will be ensured when we trust ourselves enough, holding that confidence of focus, to find the gift of our growth from every situation and relationship, regardless of how difficult and ill-planned they may become. We will learn what to say no to and what to say yes, when we are first willing to say maybe and try. Being human becomes practically defined then by our capacity to live with mistakes, not because the mistakes were so great, but because of the incredible souls we become when we transform those mistakes into jewels in the crown of our humanity. There’s no mistaking the energy of redemption, as we weep with humility and inspiration to hear the stories of those who bore terrible hardships, things we would wish on no one, only to find the transcendent grace within themselves to forgive, to love, to persevere, to overcome all limitations, to succeed beyond wildest expectations, to bestow upon us all the new possibilities for lives full of miracles, and to forever reveal what it means to be a great human soul.<br><br>
I remember in my twenties when the pure hope and ideals of my youth began to crumble and fade for the last time into the long road ahead, so rocky with apparent misfortunes, competitive dreams and blind luck. There’s a weight that threatens to crush the soul, as it gathers in the parental voices from which we ran just a few years before, only now to be forced to adopt as our own to get by. The voices that call themselves realistic and looking out for our best interests say such things as “What did you expect? This is life, get used to it! Get to work and take what you get, that’s all anyone ever does. If you had more money or love or whatever you want, you’d just be wanting something else still, so don’t let me hear you cry or complain.” But I did sometimes still cry and complain, and I managed to keep my inner child’s magic alive on breadcrumbs of faith and hope, as the roller coaster of life looked upward at times, and for a while might appear to have arrived at the level of happily-ever-after. But then the ride would go down again, all too often with breathtaking speed. And so I recall one day in particular when the choice became clear. I felt on one hand all the prescriptions for the ideal that I could concoct in my best wishful mind - if I just did this and this and this, then surely it would all turn out great, and I would win in this game of life. On the other hand I saw that I could never do all that stuff, and daily life was wearing me down just to keep up the basics. Blind optimism wrestled ardent pessimism, until rather than try yet again or accept defeat, I chose a new middle way. I heard myself say with a new sense of guidance, the ideal is real and it’s in my soul to want both, so if this life is ever going to work then it has to be from the way it is here and now. I’ve got to be me, warts and beauty and all, and in that experience I will never give up on my dreams, nor will I submit to fantasy. The most fantastic course of all has to be having and loving it all, I would not be born to want this if it were not possible. Heaven has got to be merged with the Earth.<br><br>
Since then, life has never ceased to be both hard and full of miracles. I have learned to embrace life for the lessons in hope that it holds, starting from deep within the many rich cycles of emotional fulfillments and disappointments that come with daily change. I keep on embracing, even when embrace hurts, and the things I have seen and understood are unbelievably good. I have known God in the ways that transform the heart, and yearned to stay in places that I could not but to which I will always return. The future is so bright that I can say rest assured, the way of spirit in matter works.<br><br>
- Carl J. Schroeder, Thursday Jan. 31, 2013<br><br>
http://www.facebook.com/HowToMakeHeavenOnEarth<br><br>
When life presents a challenge, say<br>
"On my way not in my way!"<br><br>
(photo "Contemplate" by Evgeni Dinev courtesy freedigitalphotos.net, slogan my own that comforts me to go into whatever life brings)<br><br><br><br>
Carl J. Schroederhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17051319009194913124noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1962472874163319823.post-82600065681219170502013-01-10T06:37:00.000-08:002013-01-11T10:00:41.533-08:00Three Wild Horses<i>The following is a parable for the three ways of dealing with new energies - to
be overly dominating, to be overly permissive, or to have mastery. And there
is something eerily real about the story's time for me, which is late 1700's
to early 1800's I'd say. The story came to me just yesterday morning in a flash of weeping and rememberances for my Native American lifetimes in which I practiced the storytelling arts to heal and guide, and perhaps needless to say I am still learning the lessons of which it speaks. Thank you Great Spirit for this and many things.</i><br><br><br>
<b><font size=+2>The Story of the Three Wild Horses</font></b><br><br>
In the time after the Spanish brought the first horses to the Americas and before white men killed too many of the buffalo, there were three native brothers who had grown to manhood in their tribe. Their parents had died from sickness long ago so they were raised by their grandmother, who was respected for her wisdom but had no horses to give to her grandsons for power or prestige. At this time horses were owned by individuals and there were not enough to go around, so they made all the difference to a family’s success. And so the brothers faced their futures with uncertainty, for each had great ambitions but did not know what to do to earn respect among their peers. <br><br>
One day the three brothers went to their grandmother for advice. The youngest brother who was hot-tempered in nature said crossly “Grandmother, I wish to become a great warrior, but I have no horse to ride into battle, what am I to do?” And the middle brother who was gentle in nature said “Grandmother, I wish to become a loving husband and father, but I have no horse to attract a mate, what am I to do?” And the eldest brother who was visionary in nature said “Grandmother, I thank you for all that you have taught me, but still I need a horse for the tribe to listen to my words, what am I to do?”<br><br>
The old woman sighed and said to her grandsons, “Come, let us make offerings to the Great Spirit and pray for a dream tonite that you may each be guided what to do.” And so they made offerings of sweet herbs and prayed around the campfire long into the night until at last they fell asleep.<br><br>
In the morning the three brothers awoke to tell their dreams to the wise old woman. The youngest said, “Oh grandmother, I dreamt that a mighty black steed with eyes of fire was waiting to be mine!” And the middle said, “Oh grandmother, I dreamt that I received a white horse so beautiful that I would have my choice of bride!” And the eldest said “Oh grandmother, I dreamt that Great Spirit said we are each to go alone into the wilderness to find the horse that is our own!” And the old woman smiled and nodded for it to be so. She packed each grandson with provisions, and each set off in a different direction to meet their destinies.<br><br>
The youngest brother came to a canyon where he spied a wild black steed with eyes of fire, just as he had seen in his dream. He cried out with victory and chased the horse into a narrow gully with high walls, where the wild horse became trapped and furious. The brother set up camp at the entrance and proceeded to break the horse’s will to be his own. The horse fought back but the brother won in the end, so at last he rode the powerful creature back into the tribe. There he was greeted by his peers who were impressed with the Great Spirit’s gift of such a terrifying horse. The brother was quickly invited into the war parties where he soon made a name for himself as undefeatable in battle and able to lead the raids to steal many needed horses.<br><br>
The middle brother met the white horse of his dreams upon the plains, where the animal approached the brother with curiosity. The brother’s gentleness and soothing words of admiration caused the wild horse to come so close that the brother dared to leap upon its back. But thereupon the horse rose up and threw the brother to the ground, where he lay with his leg badly broken. The brother pleaded to the horse for help, and miraculously the horse allowed the brother to climb upon it and be carried back toward the village. The brother was met by a group of young maidens, who so admired the beautiful horse and its new owner that they took turns caring for the brother’s leg until it would be healed, and competed among themselves to be chosen as his bride.<br><br>
The eldest brother traveled further than the others, until he came to a forest lake in the shadow of a mountain. There he saw a mighty wild horse of reddish brown and spotted white drinking at the shore, so he hid himself to observe. For days he watched the splendid creature come and go to its favorite place to drink and rest. The brother made a camp downwind so as to not alert the animal, and prayed to the Great Spirit for how to make the horse his own. The brother received dreams to guide him in understanding the horse’s wild energies, so he could gradually approach the animal and communicate his intentions to become its fair and proper master. The horse at first protested but in time came to trust the brother, until at last the two could ride back as one into the village. There they were met by the medicine man who said Great Spirit told me you were coming to be my apprentice now, and the brother was glad and gave many thanks.<br><br>
In the years that followed, the grandmother watched as her three grandsons each explored their own paths of choice and fate. The youngest brother won many battles for horses for the tribe, and in gratitude was given by the chief his proud daughter’s hand in marriage. Outwardly the couple was celebrated and appeared happy, but privately the girl proved to be demanding and even cruel. When she could not produce a child, she used her father’s favor to forbid her husband to find another bride, and to instead order him to steal not only horses but also children for her from his war parties. This earned the brother an extra wrath from neighboring tribes, who sent spies to find and kill him. The brother and his amazing horse could not outrun every attempt upon his life, and one day they were found dead with many arrows piercing their hides.<br><br>
The middle brother chose the loveliest girl who nursed him back to health to be his bride. Unfortunately, his leg never fully healed, so he became lame and dependent on his white horse to carry him on buffalo hunts to provide for his growing family. The horse remained temperamental and unreliable, which tested the patience of the loving brother. Over time the brother became so frustrated that he would lash out, but only at his wife and never to the horse who was his real problem. He feared angering the animal who was after all a magical gift of the Great Spirit to whom he owed his life. The gentle wife became increasingly unhappy, both with her husband for his treatment of her and the horse which had remained so wild that the brother’s buffalo hunts often failed and the children went hungry. Everyone in the village pitied the suffering family, but no one dared intervene for fear of crossing the will of the Great Spirit who had sent the strange white horse to create such a fate.<br><br>
The eldest brother studied under the medicine man to become his successor and a powerful shaman for the tribe. His medicine animal was the horse, of course, which gave him the power to know which way the future was headed and how to work with the energies of change. When his youngest brother was killed for having warred upon so many other tribes, the eldest brother was able to broker a peace between the chiefs, return the stolen children, and even find a suitable remarriage for his brother’s widow, the chief’s jealous daughter. When the eldest brother saw the misery of his middle brother, he whispered to the white horse and taught the middle brother to at last properly respect and tame the wild animal, thus bringing peace to the entire family. When the eldest brother saw the women of his tribe both admire and fear his powers as the medicine man, he balanced his internal energies so that he might tame his own desires as a man and become the fair and equal friend to all. <br><br>
In time, the eldest brother’s red and white spotted horse carried him on peacemaking missions to further and further tribes, until he became known to a medicine woman who was his true equal and peer. Together they foresaw the coming of the end of the buffalo, of the massacres and demise of the native way of life. When none would believe them in their time that white men could or would one day kill the mighty herds of millions of bison whose stampedes perfectly tilled the prairies unlike the white man’s overgrazing cows, the two shamans retired to that peaceful lake in the shadow of the mountain where the Great Spirit’s gift horse had first been found. In love and wisdom the couple worked quietly together to lay the seeds for a future time in which all would be healed once again upon the mighty land. They made rituals and prayers to the Great Spirit, Mother Earth, and Father Sky, called on the ancestors and future generations, and held conferences with the nature spirits, light beings, and star people to agree for when to intervene and when to allow imbalances to run their course.<br><br>
Carl J. Schroederhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17051319009194913124noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1962472874163319823.post-1125675960958128152013-01-08T09:30:00.002-08:002013-01-08T09:30:23.144-08:00May Love Bless YouPlease enjoy my first youtube music video! "May Love Bless You" is a heartbeat chant and round to inspire you into the New Year and beyond. I first sang this at the Mystical Art and Talent Show last October, and you will see an image from the curtain call as well as many other scenes from my mystical photo collection. I hope you like my video - someone claiming to be the reincarnation of Hildegard of Bingen ought to have some music to offer and so I do, though I'm not as talented as her, and frankly most of my past lives are not known for making music at all. My soul is a theologian, a mystic poet and cheerleader for the sacred heart of humankind. Go Earthlings go, yayyyy Gaia! :)
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<iframe width="560" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/YzAZeqck794" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>Carl J. Schroederhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17051319009194913124noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1962472874163319823.post-33003035028593787582012-12-25T20:03:00.001-08:002012-12-27T07:01:59.933-08:00Christmas Message 2012<font size=+1>Merry Christmas beautiful world!</font><br><br>
In my religious heritage, Christmas is the time for the savior's birth, the baby Jesus who calls forth the divine human awakening within us all. As Meister Eckhart, Dominican monk of 14th century Germany, so beautifully put the challenge before us always now:<br><br>
<blockquote>
<i>We are all meant to be mothers of God. What good is it to me if this eternal birth of the divine Son takes place unceasingly but does not take place within myself? And what good is it to me if Mary is full of grace if I am not also full of grace? What good is it to me for the Creator to give birth to his Son if I also do not give birth to him in my time and my culture? This, then, is the fullness of time. When the Son of God is begotten in us.</i></blockquote>
<br>
I'm joyful therefore to announce my Christmas creation, my gift to my self and the universe and you. This is it, oh my God dear friends, this feels to be my breakthrough youtube video lecture on the return of the divine feminine which finally gets my energies out into the world at the level that I have been working for all of my life. Everything went so smoothly, so magically in its production, and what you will see is the very first and only take. I am so incredibly grateful to the universe, for I have always dreamed of being the spiritual inspiration teacher again, but it's hard when you don't know who you are, what to say, and what to do. But now at the age of 49 I'm here, knowing it, saying it, doing it, and practicing more gratitude and love with each passing day of confidence in help and miracles. <br><br>
Thank you for being my friend and believing in me, because I have truly always wanted nothing more than to be your friend and believe in you. I love humanity, and first we must find and love the humanity inside of ourselves to shine. You will shine, you will grow, trust me. You too are a drop of the precious ocean, a seed of divine love. May God and Goddess bless you forever more, and very best holiday wishes to your own projects of dreams, destiny, and desires to become the immortal loving soul of holy perfection that you truly are.<br><br>
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Hildegard of Bingen Christmas message 2012</a></div></font><br><br>
Carl J. Schroederhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17051319009194913124noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1962472874163319823.post-42574767778597727222012-12-20T06:58:00.001-08:002012-12-20T07:00:00.205-08:00On the EveOn the eve of new beginnings, we must remind ourselves that today’s problems came from yesterday’s solutions, and will become tomorrow’s opportunities. This is so because balance is ever refining, and consciousness is ever increasing toward its own ideals. For example, today’s Earth is choking on pollution created by the industrial revolution which gave us the means for a higher standard of living for all humanity. Were we stupid and wrong to make those cars, build those factories, mine those raw materials? We will make ourselves wrong if we sit in our misery today and point the fingers of blame until we die. We will make ourselves right and wise and ever ascending in our mastery of love if we congratulate ourselves for the good intentions that we found a way to yesterday, and set about together inviting the best outcomes for tomorrow. Envision, for the universe works, and it will always bring us around to the next area of refinement necessary for our shared journey into Godhood.<br><br>
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Carl J. Schroederhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17051319009194913124noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1962472874163319823.post-72446448678256208712012-12-17T07:05:00.001-08:002012-12-17T07:06:16.277-08:00Carlton Pearson and the saving blood of ChristWow! For some reason the local NPR chose to re-air the amazing story of Carlton Pearson, the charismatic mega-church black minister and evangelical bishop who lost everything when he dared to reveal what God told him in his heart. I just happened to catch it and was so inspired! Through the 1990's Carlton built a massive following preaching the fear of hell to audiences of 5,000 every Sunday. This is how he was raised, that God was going to punish you for eternity if you didn't accept Jesus Christ as your personal savior before you die. <br><Br>
Then one day Carlton was watching the TV with his family, and saw starving children in Africa. He realized that so many would die without being reached in time by missionaries. He looked to his plump infant daughter, then back to the TV, and thought how can God send these poor children to hell just for having never heard of Jesus Christ? And God spoke in his heart and said, is that what you think I'm doing? And God went on to say to Carlton, all people are saved and loved and going to my heaven, but you have misrepresented me, that is why people fear me and have religious wars. Hell is made by people, not by me, and I am asking you to help me change this world to be the heaven it was meant to be. <br><Br>
And from that day forward Carlton renounced hell and the need to go to church to be saved. He lost everything, as he built his new doctrine of inclusion that said hell is here on Earth right now, and we have to change the church. He went down from preaching to 5000 to just 200 of the faithful, as he was branded a heretic and scorned by the fire and brimstone crowd that grew up on the fear of hell as the sole/soul motivator. He became poor and befriended by the outcasts, the gays and alternative believers who had been hated and cast out of their own fundamentalist families. Carlton said the Bible was written by people with political designs and not always correct, as he became a new kind of evangelical. He still preaches for the saving power of the blood of Christ, but not because you’re going to hell if you don’t believe, but because you’re loved and destined for heaven, and you need to feel more loved in this world. <br><Br>
I love this guy! Listen to the <a href="http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/304/heretics">story online here</a>.<br><Br>
Carl J. Schroederhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17051319009194913124noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1962472874163319823.post-32890096578500425502012-12-09T21:44:00.000-08:002012-12-09T21:44:15.355-08:00Garden of the Apparition(more to come)Carl J. Schroederhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17051319009194913124noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1962472874163319823.post-25916632674374831342012-12-08T05:57:00.004-08:002012-12-08T10:37:45.588-08:00Syrian angels call for prayers now
I read recently in the blog of a friend (well, a past life associate who freaked out a bit when I told her I’d been looking for Elisabeth von Schönau for 14 years and here she was now) that a teacher she follows, Stuart Wilde, advocates empowering our prayers by praying first FOR God rather than TO God. That everyone prays to the gods for health, wealth, and power, but the ancient Hindu wisdom is that first the gods need our prayers and blessings for their own growth and well-being, followed by our prayers for so many more in need in the world, and then having established our true caring for others we can most effectively slip in some grateful requests for our personal lives. This approach resonated with me, not because the Shining Ones do not exist without our attention, but because we must bring them closer and stronger into our realities, where of course divine love will move everyone to act for the good of the All in One and One in All. So many beautiful variations on the great themes of God sing we together here now! <br><br>
I also believe that the most effective way to call more of the divine into your life is to act on the gifts that you already have, even if they don’t seem like gifts to start. So many people desperately want more God, wisdom, love, and purpose in their lives, but then shrink from growing the seeds that they already own. We have been trained in the system of ego domination to doubt our own talents and experience, to think that what others can do is the only right way, especially when they have trained and developed for years to impressive heights. But we must start from where the real feelings begin in ourselves, no matter how small our own mustard seed. <br><br>
In mediumship this is known as give what you get, i.e. to stand and speak what Spirit is delivering to you. It gets the flow going, to open-heartedly offer into your personal world that which God has set aside just for you. Each of us has unique talents of soul that the universe wishes to exercise in service to the beautiful needs which were originally designed to bring us together in love. You simply cannot know all the good that will be set in motion by your honesty, gentleness, and sincerity as you share up your particular strains of inspiration and connection to the divine. The call of God is a test only so far as we make it a test – if our egos get in the way, then we tend to face the oppositions and suffer for yelling our truths to those who have not ears to hear. But if we’re willing to speak gently and see who most deeply responds to our love, then we will be protected by the angels and joined to see miracles grow. Hearts open like flowers, they cannot be forced as so many try, but the warmth of our sun and dew of our tears will make the ready ones bloom. <br><br>
In this spirit of giving what I got, I am setting aside my prior concepts of what I should and could do this morning, to share with you now a revelation from dream which caused me to awaken singing and then burst into tears as I realized the full extent of what had been given me to speak of. The nation of Syria is in the final throes of a terrible civil war this very weekend, and I had not been following the news closely. For this I have experienced the angels of ancient Syria coming to raise my awareness and appeal for mercy and prayers. They need us NOW, and I believe if you open your heart you will feel their call and find your own way to respond, by the way of your soul which uplifts and edifies the Great All which includes God, the angels, Syria, and you. <br><br>
I was awakened by a group of female voices singing “Oh Hama Hama, amin dabo!” It made my heart glad to sing this phrase into my audio journal recorder that I keep by my bed, and I continued to sing it as I got up and stretched and thought over my dreams. Here is the <a href="http://www.soulstirring.org/returnofhildegard/Oh Hama Hama Amin Dabo.mp3">simple recording I made</a>, having no idea at the time that I'd soon be posting this on the internet! <br><br>
I dreamt that I showed a male coworker a picture I’d drawn for a concert that I realized I was planning to give. The poster was of a goddess as big as a mountain in a long flowing white robe that was shaped like a mountain. The perspective was looking up so the face of the goddess was distant at the top, but when I looked at the face there was behind it a sun of massive golden light that suddenly shone right off the paper and made the image real, more real than the dream itself. This startled me, until my friend and a woman told me that another woman was in town to play at the concert tonite. I apologized and said yes, I’d planned a concert months ago but hadn’t worked on it since, so I’m sure it’s been cancelled for tonite. But the woman showed up with her guitar anyway, so I said well maybe we can find a talent show for you to play in today, since you’re ready to go. <br><br>
Then they took me across a field to a small building where an dark-skinned man made an emotional appeal for donations to help his war-torn country that was somehow connected to Africa. He said a dictator was destroying the land and he just needed a dollar from each of us. He then went around and I found myself offering two dollars rolled up in two pages I was holding, but he said he only needed one dollar for some kind of registration process and took that gratefully. Then I left with my friends to go back to our building, but I realized when I got back that I’d left my favorite olive green jacket at the place. So I went back alone and was glad to find my jacket. When I picked it up in the room, women’s voices began singing “Oh Hama Hama, amin dabo!” until I woke up singing it too. <br><br>
As I thought about the dream, I remembered that tonite is a coworker’s Hannukah party, where several of us are musicians together so we may sing some holiday songs. I’d had other dreams this week of wanting to make music again (it’s an occasional hobby as the spirit moves me), so I resolved to go tonite to honor the dream and sing the new melody. A context of Middle East peace seemed apparent now, and I wondered if my Jewish friend could tell me what the words mean. I sang “Oh Hama Hama, amin dabo!” as I then searched on my computer, and burst into more and more tears as I found several facts that deeply resonated. (Don't you just love the internet!) <br><br>
Hama is an ancient city in Syria that is hugely famous for its massive water wheels called norias, used for watering gardens as far back as 1100 BC. When I saw a photo on Wikipedia of a noria on the river Orontes, I cried with a deep soulful recognition and felt a part of myself living there. The giant goddess of flowing robes in my dream seemed immediately connected with the towering flowing waters of Hama. I am especially sensitive to the water element and felt deeply called. The city is named Hamath in the Bible, and settlements there date back to the early Neolithic and Stone Age, or 12000 years ago. Clearly Hama is a cornerstone of civilization that God and the angels have long blessed. <br><br>
<img src="http://www.soulstirring.org/returnofhildegard/photo-hama-syria.jpg"><br><br>
Remembering then the appeal in my dream of the dark skinned man for help and caring for his war-torn country, I realized that the suffering of Syria was now of great concern to my spiritual heart. The token dollars he collected seemed to be the prayers that were needed immediately, and the fact that I wrapped two dollars in two rolled papers spoke to me of my dual existences from which I inspirationally write, as both myself in this lifetime and others in past lives. The man wanted only one dollar from me because it was up to myself today to act on his appeal.<br><br>
And what of the phrase “amin dabo”? I googled again and quickly found that “amin” is the Islamic and Arabic word for amen, and “dabo” is Latin for “I will give (to you)”. So the Arabic amen evokes more of the peace bridging to my Christian past lives, many of whom spoke Latin, especially Hildegard who lived her whole life in the shadow of the brutal Crusades whose legacy is in no small part the westward hatred of the Islamic extremists. <br><br>
Peace come to Syria, the angels of Hama are calling us now! <br><br>
So I burst into more tears to realize the full power of this prayer as I sang: “Oh Hama Hama, amin dabo!” Oh Hama Hama, I will give to you on this day of my open heart, amen! <br><br>
Please keep Syria in your prayers in the coming weeks, and share this story and song if it helps. I enjoyed going into spontaneous chanting starting from the simple melody, so you can extemporize as you feel the energy move. And I think it’s no coincidence that the ancient city of Hama has spoken for its war-torn country, so that the next time you hear of fighting between Hamas and Israel you will make an additional connection to a place of great beauty and peace, which the Middle East is destined to become once again. <br><br>
Thank you and Many Blessings,<br>
Carl and Hildegard<br>
<br><br>
Carl J. Schroederhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17051319009194913124noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1962472874163319823.post-4051240425404376742012-11-24T10:11:00.003-08:002012-11-24T10:45:09.839-08:00Thanksgiving week thoughts and quotesHere are some recent musings from <a href=http://www.facebook.com/carl.schroeder.750>my facebook </a> …<br><br>
<hr><br>
Thursday: Happy Thanksgiving! Gratitude is the great attitude. The greatest trick to life is just learning to receive, because God has made the universe is so abundant, generous, and always ready to give.<br><br>
(Lots of people liked that one, such nice people!)<br><br>
<hr><br>
On Wednesday,someone posted a graphic of this beautiful purported Hopi prophecy. "When the Earth is ravaged and the Animals are dying, a new tribe of people shall come unto the Earth from many colors, creeds, and classes, and who by their actions and deeds shall make the Earth green again. They shall be know as the Warriors of the Rainbow."<br><br>
I wrote: I like to think the Rainbow Warrior prophecies are genuine, although even if they are a modern invention they are inspiring. The 1962 book "Warriors of the Rainbow: Strange and Prophetic Dreams of the Indians" by Willoya and Brown is often criticized for its Christian hippie agenda and surprising anti-semitism, but it did inspire the Greenpeace movement. Here are some <a href=http://www.welcomehome.org/rainbow/prophecy/prophecies.html >links to native stories</a> that relate. -- I also like the song "Rainbow Warrior" from the second Buggles album, anyone remember that?<br><br>
<hr><br>
On Tuesday, someone posted a graphic of a Wayne Dyer quote: "I cannot always control what goes on outside but I CAN always CONTROL WHAT GOES ON INSIDE."<br><br>
I wrote: I have to disagree. People do not have control of inside or outside. Who would want to control their relationships? When love not control is the goal, then inside and outside are the same.<br><br>
Explanation: This is a serious peeve of mine. Wayne Dyer may have meant something good, but largely this quote points to the ego which thinks it ought to be able to totally command and dominate something, with the supposedly mature version of this impulse being to let the world do what it wants because at least I can control myself. But this can easily lead to a don't-blame-me superiority and victimhood which says hey, I'm perfect, I didn't make this mess, why can't you control yourself like I do?! That's utter macho bullshit of course and highly destructive. Control is neither possible nor fun, and those who seek it will lose control until they learn their lesson. Talk to all the compulsive obsessive mentally/emotionally ill people in the world today, they're certainly not able to control what goes on inside of them. They and everyone they love suffer horribly, which is both sad and dangerous.<br><br>
Love is the answer, love is the restorer of all powers necessary for good living. In love, you trust and play with your friends, you enjoy giving and receiving gifts, and you have no interest in controlling outcomes. Life is full of miracles and wonderful surprises, life is not predictable. Control kills relationships, control saps power, control is a false god.<br><br>
The importance of my stand became clear to me by a message from the universe that very Tuesday night. Someone at my dream group asked me about how my book was going, and whether I had a certain writer I admire and emulate for their style, perhaps Wayne Dyer they spontaneously suggested. Wow I thought, thank you, I really need to keep writing! I may have things to learn from Wayne Dyer's success, but he is not saying the ideas that I know need to be said.<br><br>
<hr><br>
Also on Tuesday, someone posted a graphic of a Buddha quote: "Holding on to anger is like drinking poison and expecting the other person to die."<br><br>
I really liked this and wrote: Yes - and I think even positively expressed and released anger that hopes to change someone else is like drinking medicine and expecting the other person to get better. We have to expect to be the one who changes with our emotional self-respect. Anger can be constructive, but I spent years perfecting my anger expression with my eye on how others would improve, until I realized that I'd changed myself and it was I who could move on easily, so if they wanted to stay stuck that was their problem now.<br><br>
Later I commented: Oh and about that Buddha quote, guess what, he didn't say it. What the Buddha really said was: "The problem with great internet quotes is that you can't be sure who really said them."<br><br>
For more details see: <a href=http://www.fakebuddhaquotes.com/holding-onto-anger-is-like-drinking-poison/>Fake Buddha Quotes</a> and <a href=http://quoteinvestigator.com/>Quote Investigator</a><br><br><br><br>Carl J. Schroederhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17051319009194913124noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1962472874163319823.post-46437519191134911972012-10-31T05:40:00.002-07:002012-12-20T07:18:12.887-08:00Halloween Memories, and Hildegard's favorite pop song
Some of my earliest memories of childhood are my making otherworldly creatures such as dragons, ghosts, mummies, and more. I drew them, sculpted them, and told stories with an almost obsessive precocious passion. This was not just at Halloween but all year round. As I see my own kids sketch monsters today, I realize that some of this is only natural, as our culture teaches many popular movie monster forms, and children have a lot of fears to conceptualize and try to conquer in stories and images. I went through some phases of distinct influence, such as drawing griffins and medusas from Greek mythology, vampires and frankensteins from gothic Hollywood, tentacled aliens from science fiction, and bumbling spooks from cartoons like Caspar and Scooby Doo. The dragons did seem to transcend the trends however, as I perennially imagined them in fantastic writhing shimmering scales and soaring on great bat wings, sometimes dreaming of them taking me for rides even to this day. In 1998 soon after I remembered that I’d been Hildegard of Bingen in a past life, a dragon lifted me high above the Earth to show me the future of the planet, as great interlocking chess-like movements of energies and populations would rebalance the world into a great awakening within my lifetime. <br><br>
As a child I loved to prop the sofa cushions and pillows into not just forts but corridors and chambers of spook houses filled in my mind with eerie delights. I fantasized and sketched for the construction of a haunted house ride in the backyard, perhaps all impossibly contained within the little woodshed that was filled with dusty logs and spiders. At the harvest time county fair I would eye the spook house attractions with great fascination, convincing my dad to take me through them until I decided that they were either too scary or too boring. Nothing would quite satisfy my own imagination. To my surprise, my mother picked up my spook house ambitions in my teenage years, some time after I’d moved on to other things like model railroading and girls. She actually convinced the Presbyterian church to let her convert the fellowship hall into a haunted house, sectioned by black plastic hung on wires into six tableaus of the strange and horrible. Local kids of all denominations thrilled to help her build and animate the sets and costumes, which were not so gory as fantastic, and certainly not like the relentless murderous trends seen in Halloween entertainment today. Still, I and some others questioned the church appropriateness of the popular small-town extravaganza, which ran for several years. <br><br>
Toward the end of my mother’s spook house run, we started hearing of the Hell House phenomenon, in which evangelicals would stage Halloween attractions in their own churches for a different kind of entertainment. There, biblical gore for deadly sins was piled on gratuitously to torment and terrify the haunted house visitor into fearing for their own upcoming damnation and converting to Jesus (or some church’s version of Him) before the night was over. That marked the end for me of any fright appeal. From that point on I started to fantasize of Heaven houses, complete with inspirational tableaus of angels, fairies, and holy ghosts, within the magnificent homes and lands they surely populated. Rainbow glens, crystal cities, talking forests, dancing lights. I felt certain this would be the seasonal entertainment of the future, and I know now that the annual <a href=http://www.soulstirring.org>Mystical Art and Talent Show</a> I’ve run every October since 2001 at the Swedenborg Chapel in Cambridge carries this torch. To the naked eye there may appear but local spiritual artists presenting amateur works of painting, story, dance, and song in a succession of impassioned brief segments, but for the heart we fill to bursting our little gothic chapel with the warmth and taste of each soul’s own Heavenly home. I’d do it monthly if I could - indeed for the first three years it was a triannual event - it is so my idea of church. Sharing visions of the Source! <br><br>
But this was not the first time I’d felt drawn to stewarding inspirational events. In college in the eighties, I tried being the social chairman for my fraternity. Highlight was the Sixties party, for which I drew ornate psychedelic posters and researched the best authentic heady music at local used record stores. In the mid-nineties, I attempted a world music rave event at my own apartment, for which I planned and built for weeks. I cleared all furnishings into the basement so that K-ral’s Ravelations could feature a dance room with chaser lights and video clips from the greatest otherworldly movies (the deep sea fairy of Abyss, creatures from the Neverending Story), an art room with papered walls and endless crayons, and a kitchen with simmering pots of herbal high teas. Signs welcomed mystified friends and coworkers in two dozen languages – this is when I learned the phrase I so love “Isten Hozott”, Hungarian for “God brought you”. <br><br>
The energies I opened at my one-night rave event continued to grow within me, so it was at the same apartment over the next two years that I wrote new music, essays, and poetry that culminated in my own shattering revelation that I’d been a 12th century mystic German abbess. Concurrent with this ecstasy was my discovery of Hammond castle in Gloucester, a place to which I’d been intuitively recommended since college by a Germanic girlfriend and travelling companion, but never felt ready to go. When I finally crossed the threshold of this 1930 recreation of a medieval fantasy built from authentic parts by a genius eccentric inventor, I was struck by déjà vu beyond compare. I knew rooms before I entered them, felt totally at home despite the creepy atmosphere that puts off many people, and entertained the grand notion that I must have been not only Hildegard but also John Hayes Hammond Jr., father of radio control and second in number of patents only to Thomas Edison. I’d been through wanna-be inventor phases in my life, and he was known for befriending philosophers and artists within strange creatively staged parties. Hammond so fancied himself a religious hermit underneath it all that he’d sit late at night in monk’s robes in a stone corner of his castle reading obscure texts, so a past life like mine seemed assured. Indeed it would take years to solve the mystery – Hammond is a guide to me as I am to him, and was the monk Volmar, Hildegard’s own trusted scribe. Fortunately at the time, just as I was becoming obsessed for wanting to stage Heaven houses at John’s historic gothic structure, I became more pragmatically invited to hold events at the similarly atmospheric Swedenborg Chapel in Cambridge. <br><br>
My guide and alter-ego for the Mystical Art and Talent Show continues to be Hildegard, of course. For years I’ve said nothing, but increasingly dropped hints and witnessed the synchronicities, such as the display by one artist a couple years ago of candles marked with words from Hildegard’s secret sacred language, the Lingua Ignota. That bit of inspiration was contributed by a linguist friend with whom I’d talked about Hildegard only a little, before he had dreams of singing with her and knowing that he had to think of something to contribute to the show. Several of the artists were in fact with Hildegard, so I’m happy to just feel the tremendous vibes and remain fairly incognito. A lot of my own dreams have come true, and more will come I know. In 1998 I was too busy experiencing my own inner dimensions to research Hildegard’s historical facts very much, but I soon came across a recording of her Ordo Virtutum that resonated unbelievably. <br><br>
The “Order of the Virtues” was Hildegard’s most modern and visionary spectacle for which she is quite famous – some would call it the first opera. In a kind of medieval sung morality play, the heavenly angelic virtues personified call to a lost soul in the world, competing with the devil in hopes to guide her home to heaven and God. The singing is quite beautiful, soaring busy melodies as is characteristic of Hildegard’s composing, with the one symbolic exception that the devil only shouts, for he is incapable of harmony with all that is divine. It is believed – and I’ve come to understand this on many levels – that the Ordo Virtutum was written to call a beloved nun of Hildegard’s order back who’d left for another abbey appointment, a temptation that Hildegard considered wrong. As the only man allowed in the abbey, Volmar good naturedly played the part of the devil in any performances of the work, which were private and failed to entice Richardis back before she tragically died. In 1998 however, I could only begin to feel that the opera was calling me home to Hildegard, and so took out the domain name and began a website for which I could write inspirationally to fan my inner flame of the prosaic eternal mystic I was destined to become and always be. <br><br>
Halloween comes at harvest time and is short for “All Hallows Evening”, meaning the evening before All Hallows, aka All Saints Day, which is itself a religious feast celebrated on November 1 in Western Christianity and in June after Pentecost in Eastern Christianity. Halloween thus has both pagan and Christian roots which interleave rather neatly. On the pagan side, the Celtic festival of Samhain celebrates the summer’s end and the eerie magic of a seasonal transition, considered to be a time when the veil between worlds is thin. Not unlike Day of the Dead rituals as seen in Mexico, Samhain features the invitation of good ancestral spirits and fairies while remaining wary of mischievous ones who may be seeking one last chance to do harm before returning to the other side. Hence the tradition of costumes helps to disguise identities from ego forces, as well as entertaining those from whom donations are sought for feasting (trick or treat). On the Christian side, soul cakes were baked and collected since the 12th century in a ritual of prayer for the souls in purgatory, and costumes would have given similar protection from any evil spirits. Halloween did not take hold in the United States however until the Scottish and Irish waves of immigration in the 1800’s, since the Puritans abhorred the tradition going back to the 1600’s Reformation in England. In America is where the carving of native pumpkins became popular, since they were larger and easier to hollow than the turnips used traditionally in Europe. <br><br>
While disliking the horror emphasis of modern Halloween, I can still enjoy and see the soul intent of disguising at a time of crossing worlds. The reason most people do not or cannot recall their own past lives is so they can focus on the present ego and how best to shape and polish it toward a more Godly state within a current moral system. Only when a consciousness is ready to embrace an eternal divine role beyond the illusions of free will (since when did choice mean being able to do anything at any time without responsibility!?) may the human mind begin to glimpse it’s longer journey of identity through the halls of time. The Ordo Virtutum is a cornerstone of my soul to me, and has been with me in more than one disguise. This week I was strolling through my ipod’s vast portable music collection (oh, the technology!) and came across a college era favorite, a personal anthem I brought back from my travels in Germany. I burst into weeping to recognize the resonance to Hildegard’s opera that explained why I so unknowingly loved this great classic curiosity of Euro pop and Neue Deutsche Welle (German New Wave). Germans and Austrians will know it well but Americans will not, so as my own trick or treat offering, I’d like to share this with you now. <br><br>
In 1983, the unlikely alliance of two male Austrian comedians and two female German singers combined forces to make a bizarre catchy hybrid album whose top song defied all expectations to launch the band to a brief international fame. I was in Germany for the first time and just in time to hear “Codo” and weep inexplicably. Of course the title alone could remind my unconscious of “Ordo”, but the similarities do not stop there. I just knew I had to own the album and translate the lyrics, which fascinated me endlessly. A devil character shouts at the coming of a heavenly ship from another world, which carries angelic female voices who sing to the Earth reminding and inviting us to the ultimate joys of pure love. <br><br>
Oh my God, this *is* the Ordo Virtutum, translated forward nearly nine centuries to the sounds of sweet German pop by a clever inventive band named Deutsch-Österreichisches Feingefühl (or DÖF for short, meaning German-Austrian Good Feelings)! No wonder I cried, and memorized and sang this song for years afterward, as I walked about Boston, MIT, and my hometown in New York state where I tried to convince my German ex-pat father that the words were unbelievably profound. He thought it was only cute of course – he wasn’t there with Hildegard. <br><br>
Here now I share with you the <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h7woSjMPreA">charming youtube video</a> of the eighties hit Codo, and my own translation of the words below. It’s clear to me that this is one of the great artifacts of Spirit in the world, when an inspired cultural oddity is paved to sudden and great success against all odds and expectations. Some things just have to be made, to bring in the energies upon which the future depends - I’m reminded of another example of love’s breaking into the world that inspired me so, the 2011 movie “The Adjustment Bureau” which I only this summer enjoyed (my own love life was changing, it was time for me).
As DÖF band members Josei Prokopetz and Inga Humpe explained when asked the story behind their spectacle of a song:<br><br>
<blockquote>Codo is an abbreviation for "Cosmic Dolm" or also "Cosmic Depp" (both meaning cosmic idiot). Codo was an extraterrestrial creature without a specific gender, which overcomes hate and brings everything that is missing to us stressed and negatively attuned human beings: a good mood, jokes, charm and above all love.</blockquote>
If that is not the divine androgyne of the soul returning to uplift us all, I do not know what is! Thank you thank you, dearest DÖF! And Happy Halloween dear world, for God is here in you disguised, and sometimes made to shine! <br><br><br>
<font size=+2>Codo</font><br>
by DÖF (translation Carl J. Schroeder, aka Hildegard von Bingen) <br><br>
(narrator) <br>
For two thousand years the Earth has lived without Love. <br>
The men of hate rule. <br><br>
(male leader speaks) <br>
Hateful, I am so hateful, <br>
so ghastly hateful, <br>
I am hate. <br><br>
Hating, so horribly hating, <br>
I can't let anything be, <br>
I am hate. <br><br>
(control tower) <br>
Attention, attention, Unknown flying object appoaching the planet! <br>
Identify unknown flying object. <br><br>
(woman sings) <br>
Codo the third<br>
from the star center, <br>
I am the third from the left. <br><br>
(control tower) <br>
Unknown flying object identifies as Codo. <br><br>
(woman sings) <br>
And I jet, jet, jet, jet, <br>
in such fast steps<br>
and bring the love with me<br>
from my heaven ship. <br><br>
And the love, love, love, love<br>
makes more fun<br>
far more fun<br>
than anything else. <br><br>
(male leader speaks) <br>
We do not need any love on this planet<br>
Target Codo, destroy the love! <br><br>
(control tower) <br>
Target acquired Gamma Delta 7-3-1 overall<br><br>
(woman sings) <br>
Codo from far away<br>
the brightest star<br>
I jet so happily<br>
past anything. <br><br>
And I jet, jet, jet, jet, <br>
in such fast steps<br>
and bring the love with me<br>
from my heaven ship. <br><br>
And the love, love, love, love<br>
makes more fun<br>
far more fun<br>
than anything else. <br><br>
(control tower) <br>
Object evades the hateful viewscreen! <br><br>
(male leader speaks) <br>
Corrosive<br>
I am so corrosive<br>
I subvert everything<br>
I am hate. <br><br>
(woman sings) <br>
And I jet, jet, jet, jet, <br>
in such fast steps<br>
and bring the love with me<br>
from my heaven ship. <br><br>
And the love, love, love, love<br>
makes more fun<br>
far more fun<br>
than anything else. <br><br><br>
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<br><br>
<font size=+2>Codo</font><br>
by DÖF (original German words to learn and sing along!) <br><br>
(Manfred Tauchen:) <br>
Seit 2000 Jahren lebt die Erde ohne Liebe<br>
Es regiert der Herr des Hasses<br><br>
(Joesi Prokopetz:) <br>
hässlich, ich bin so hässlich<br>
So gräßlich hässlich<br>
Ich bin der Haß<br>
Hassen, ganz hässlich hassen<br>
Ich kann's nicht lassen<br>
Ich bin der Haß<br><br>
(Anete Humpe:) <br>
Attention, attention<br>
Unknown flying object appoaching the planet<br><br>
(Manfred Tauchen:) <br>
Identify unknown flying object<br><br>
(Inga Humpe:) <br>
Codo der Dritte<br>
Aus der Sternenmitte<br>
Bin ich der dritte von links<br><br>
(Manfred Tauchen:) <br>
Unknown flying object identified as Codo<br><br>
(Inga Humpe:) <br>
Und ich düse, düse, düse, düse<br>
Im Sauseschritt<br>
Und bring die Liebe mit<br>
Von meinem Himmelritt<br>
Denn die Liebe, Liebe, Liebe, Liebe<br>
Die macht viel Spaß<br>
Viel mehr Spaß<br>
Als irgendwas<br><br>
(Joesi Prokopetz:) <br>
We do not need any love on this planet<br>
Target Codo, vernichtet die Liebe<br><br>
(Manfred Tauchen:) <br>
Zielansprache Gamma Delta 7-3-1 Ãœberraum<br><br>
(Inga Humpe:) <br>
Codo aus der Ferne<br>
Der leuchtenden Sterne<br>
Ich düse gerne<br>
Durch all<br><br>
Und ich düse, düse, düse, düse<br>
Im Sauseschritt<br>
Und bring die Liebe mit<br>
Von meinem Himmelritt<br>
Denn die Liebe, Liebe, Liebe, Liebe<br>
Die macht viel Spaß<br>
Viel mehr Spaß<br>
Als irgendwas<br><br>
(Manfred Tauchen:) <br>
Objekt überwindet den Haß-Schirm<br><br>
(Joesi Prokopetz:) <br>
ätzend<br>
Ich bin so ätzend<br>
Alles zersetzend<br>
Ich bin der Haß<br><br>
(Inga Humpe:) <br>
Und ich düse, düse, düse, düse<br>
Im Sauseschritt<br>
Und bring die Liebe mit<br>
Von meinem Himmelritt<br>
Denn die Liebe, Liebe, Liebe, Liebe<br>
Die macht viel Spaß<br>
Viel mehr Spaß<br>
Als irgendwas<br><br>
Carl J. Schroederhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17051319009194913124noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1962472874163319823.post-26109668913313054252012-09-07T09:45:00.001-07:002012-09-08T05:49:16.241-07:00Humor and Heaven
Humor is so interesting, because it can reveal deep things about our beliefs and the energies we're living beneath the polite surface of our civilization. Most theories of humor consider the taboo-breaking factor, that jokes pry themselves into our anxieties and relieve the tensions by various kinds of guilty wish-fulfillment. For example it can be clear that cruel jokes appeal to people who have judgments and want to punish someone, while sex jokes appeal to people who have been considering more sex and in more ways than they've been told is allowed.<br><br>
Many jokes hinge their power upon punning. Puns can startle and delight us by safely highlighting the multiple meanings that we must ordinarily ignore to stay sane and productive, while in fact the unspoken interconnections of language impact us constantly and provide pathways to altered states. People of madness or genius alike will tend to show hyper-associative thinking which is rich in puns, neologisms, and other wordplay. Advancements in language are often made by such individuals, for whom words are tools and toys of the mind. Lewis Carroll for example coined the term "portmanteau" to mean words that combine in both sound and meaning, such as smoke + fog to make smog. A portmanteau is an old-fashioned double sided suitcase, so all the baggage of two words is being packed into one! Carroll was of course a master of the portmanteau and beyond, as seen in his unforgettably evocative and arguably insane poem Jabberwocky:<br><br>
'Twas brillig and the slithy toves,<br>
did gyre and gimble in the wabe.<br>
All mimsy were borogoves,<br>
and the mome raths outgrabe.<br><br>
The portmanteaus here are so stretched that our minds reach for meanings that we cannot fully grasp, and so the alternate reality is both familiar and terribly alien. Something was brilliant and maybe fragile, slithering and slimy, but God help us after that! In fact, Humpty Dumpty explains to Alice in <i>Through the Looking-Glass</i> (1871) that "slithy" means "lithe and slimy" and "mimsy" is "flimsy and miserable". <br><br>
I certainly loved puns and Jabberwocky in college as did many of my peers, and it would seem to me that language mash-ups fascinate the young adult mind which is struggling to break the old generation's hold on their thinking. As I've gotten older, I still like puns but not for punning's sake. I tend to favor absurd humor that exposes the conflicted biases of normal society and suggests entirely different ways of being.<br><br>
For examples, I turn to the few jokes that I've been able to memorize. An unusual quality of jokes is that they can be hard for most of us to recite, we just remember the experience of surprise and laughter that we hoped to share. "I guess you had to be there!" Our embarrassment to put ourselves on the spot probably attests to the taboo-busting work that jokes accomplish, because our brains are normally excluding their outsider perspectives and thus resist easy memorization. So which jokes do stick with us almost certainly reveal the personal areas in which we are yearning to break free of old dogmas and reality conventions. Both of my following favorites are by Emo Philips, a bizarre idiot-savant kind of character who borders madness and genius with child-like perspectives informed by references to classic moral and philosophical problems:<br><br>
"I used to think that the brain was the most wonderful organ in my body. Then I realized who was telling me this."<br><br>
"When I was a kid I used to pray every night for a new bicycle. Then I realised that the Lord doesn't work that way so I stole one and asked Him to forgive me."<br><br>
A part of me can't stop laughing at these! So the biases of the intellect and religion that are denying me pleasures of my whole body and getting what I ask for in life are of top importance to me. At the expense of political correctness, I'll admit to another zinger by Emo that I've been unable to forget or not find awfully funny. It too suggests a whole side of life that has been denied my knowing, with a sudden exposure of prejudice by punning that brings me satisfactions of both pain and delight:<br><br>
"I'm from Downers Grove, Illinois. We had a blackout there the other day, but fortunately the police made him get back into his car before he got too far."<br><br>
Yes, I was from a small rural white town, where basically just one token black family lived and was respected, so long as they contributed to positive stereotypes such as working hard in jobs of less authority and excelling at sports for the hometeam. But when the young man dated a white woman and they were clearly in love, the town became embarassingly split, with some families (not mine) suddenly showing raw hatred and fear. Fortunately my mother was a school teacher who pushed international culture awareness on her own children as well as her students, and I grew up fundamentally craving diversity as essential to divine inspiration and human wisdom.<br><br>
Recently a joke came to me in a daily email humor list; there are many worth signing up for, because you never know by what synchronicities humor will augment your day's consciousness. This joke is a bit longer and simply revels in the kind of alternate idiot-savant thinking that I can celebrate, at least until the deeper cultural problem is considered. Note that I changed the nationality and gender of the person to be unimportant, since I have no humor interest in stereotyping some human beings as smarter than others. Technically, English doesn't have good gender neutral replacements for the singular third-person pronouns he and she, but I use they and them for this purpose regularly, and I expect it will become part of the language in the future.<br><br>
<blockquote>
A simple person died and went to heaven. When they got to the pearly gate
Saint Peter told them that new rules were in effect due to the advances
in education on earth. In order to gain admittance a prospective
heavenly soul must answer three questions:<br><br>
1. Name two days of the week that begin with "T".<br><br>
2. How many seconds are in a year?<br><br>
3. What is God's first name?<br><br>
The person thought for a few minutes and answered...<br><br>
1. The two days of the week that begin with "T" are Today and Tomorrow.<br><br>
2. There are 12 seconds in a year.<br><br>
3. God has two first names, and they are Andy and Howard."<br><br>
Saint Peter said, "OK, I'll buy the Today and Tomorrow, even though
it's not the answer I expected, so your answer is correct.<br><br>
But how did you get 12 seconds in a year, and why did you ever think
that God's first name was either Andy or Howard?"<br><br>
The person replied, "Well, January 2nd, February 2nd,March 2nd, etc...."<br><br>
"OK, I give," said Saint Peter, "but what about the God's first name stuff?"<br><br>
The person said, "Well, from the song....Andy walks with me, Andy talks
with me, Andy tells me I am his own..., and the prayer...Our Father,
who art in heaven, Howard be thy name...."<br><br>
Saint Peter let them in without another word.<br><br>
</blockquote>
Great stuff! And then the deeper anxiety that the joke wedges into bubbled to the surface in me. Oh God, I had a dream recently in which I saw a group of people that I was deeply drawn to be with, but when I went to join them I became so overcome with inadequacies that I had to run away in shame before I could even see their reaction to me. I awoke so upset and crying, that I had to do a meditation and visualize a different ending, in which I reached for someone's hand despite all my fears of rejection, and they grasped it and smiled at me. I have felt an opening to more love from that experience ever since.<br><br>
The idea that one must pass a qualification to enter heaven is old indeed, and has been esoterically verified by those who see gatekeepers to hold standards of behavior for different spiritual planes. But where we belong in our hearts is where we must feel wanted, or else we suffer torments of a divided soul and temptations to judge others in defense, which will only make matters worse. The fox and the grapes: oh I didn't want to be there anyway! But the pain of deprivations continue, despite what the mind can rationalize.<br><br>
Then I laughed, because the following resolution of the joke came to me, from some spiritual guidance that showed heaven's own brand of real humor and love. Enjoy! :)<br><br>
<blockquote>
An honest person died and went to heaven. When they got to the pearly gate
Saint Peter told them that new rules were in effect due to the advances
in education on earth. In order to gain admittance a prospective
heavenly soul must answer three questions:<br><br>
1. Name two days of the week that begin with "T".<br><br>
2. How many seconds are in a year?<br><br>
3. What is God's first name?<br><br>
The person thought for a few minutes and answered...<br><br>
1. The two days of the week that begin with "T" are Tuesday and Thursday.<br><br>
2. I might be able to calculate the number of seconds if you give me paper and pencil, but I don't know off the top of my head.<br><br>
3. I'm sorry, I don't know what God's first name is.<br><br>
The person started to turn away in despair, but Saint Peter stopped them with tears in his eyes.<br><br>
"Thank you so much, you're absolutely correct in all of your answers! We never expected you to know anything to want to return to God, that's been a human quality that we've had to contend with up here as you people advance in your civilization. In heaven, you can learn anything you want after you let in how much we love you just for being, and especially how much we celebrate when you come to us for a place to belong. I only had to ask questions because you expected me to, and the only answer I'm not allowed to accept is a false one made to impress, because then the real you isn't really here."<br><br>
The person had a hard time absorbing this, but tried, and still had to ask.<br><br>
"So, what is God's first name?"<br><br>
Saint Peter laughed. "Potentially that's the easiest question of all! How many days start with T depends on your language, of course. How many seconds are in a year depends on the difference between your calendar and the true solar year, which is hard even for astronomers to measure and can change over time. But God, well God has many names, and your favorite one someday will be your own."<br><br>
The person might have backed away in some shame of doubts at this, but such a light of heavenly friends came out to greet them that they were enfolded in love and escorted Home.
</blockquote><br><br>
<i>** with special thanks and blessing to Richardis, through the ages and stages you've always known how to make me laugh <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Ki_DsPkSjQ">***</a></i><br><br>Carl J. Schroederhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17051319009194913124noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1962472874163319823.post-68098818328884856532012-08-16T08:51:00.002-07:002012-08-16T09:16:24.770-07:00Three Paths of LoveFrom recent guidance and inspiration comes the following meetup description for my cosmic discussions group, for details see <a href="http://www.cosmicdocent.com">www.CosmicDocent.com</a><br><br>
<hr>
<font size=+1>The Three Paths of Love: Sacrifice, Healing, and Endless Joy</font><br>
Tuesday, August 28, 2012<br>
7:00 PM to 9:00 PM<br>
Cambridge Swedenborg Chapel <br>
50 Quincy St, Cambridge, MA<br><br>
As I've learned to clear my karma with the ascension energies of 2012 and beyond, I've come to see clearly how there are three paths of love that people follow in life. All human beings seek to love and be loved, as a protecting and promoting of our deepest values which begin in the spirit and reach for the soul. What has to be explained in the world is how varied are people's experiences of love. Anything is possible, from misery in persecution, alienation, and lonliness, through public success with private ups and downs that weary us over time, to the most blessed and refreshing of lifelong growth in all the kinds of relationships possible, from work to family, from friendships to spiritual ecstasies including of course with the self.<br><br>
Everyone deserves love, because all people deserve a chance to be free and happy. The true universe always forgives and celebrates; God never judges or punishes however much our human societies may. We are told over and over that we create our own realities, but what does that really mean? It means that we each hold a mixture of beliefs that filter our views on life, so some possibilities seem much more real and closer to us than others. Some beliefs are small, like which TV show can make me happiest, others more consequential, like will I ever be totally free, happy and safe in this world. We do ourselves the greatest favors when we seek out beliefs about potential itself, for understandings that explain not only where we are, but where we have been and where we can be going. I find that the Three Paths is such a belief, by explaining how it is that all people look for love, but some people are recognizing and allowing much more love into their lives than others.<br><br>
The three paths are progressive, and so lead into the next. The Path of Sacrifice is about holding many beliefs of opposition, so that you always have to be making either-or choices in life. Good things have to be sacrificed to save other good things, you can't have it all. In sincere defense of themselves or their tribe, people can allow terrible things to happen to someone, thinking that there is no alternative. On the path of sacrifice, people are deep down good, but evil is allowed to arise, and people can be corrupted and lost. The path of sacrifice is a hard one indeed, and we all have known it too long.<br><br>
At some point on the Path of Sacrifice, a person hits rock bottom and says that's it, enough is enough. I'm tired of sacrificing myself for others in some situations, and sacrificing others for me the rest of the time. I'm going to have to insist on people taking more responsibility for themselves, while I stop trying to rescue or be rescued. I'm going to hold compassion and care to do what I reasonably can, but I'm going to take care of myself first and foremost without hurting anyone else or letting people hurt me. And that's going to be a good thing by golly, I will not hold onto guilt or depression for who I am, because if everyone did more of this then the world would surely be a much better place. I'm going to stop judging others, and I refuse to accept judgments on me. <br><br>
Attitudes like these reveal when we have shifted to the Path of Healing, which is characterized by a kind of sacrifice still, but the helpful kind, of letting go bad ideas for good, useless context for useful. Limiting either-or beliefs are converted to liberating empowerment for all, personal not absolute values are weighed, all things have their season. Karma is revisited for the last time, old wounds are getting cleaned out. Many spiritual people are on the path of healing and have been for a very long time. There are many tears to be shed, buried pain to be surfaced and faced, and much letting go to be mastered. <br><br>
It's like being in bed convalescing, feeling sick but a little better each day, dreaming of running free again but not sure when that will be possible. It's not easy, and can be quite the emotional roller coaster, as yet one more issue comes up in our way just when we think we have it made. Many short-term opportunities and relationships are explored, as people find cause to rejoice and hope, then release more heartbreak as they grow out of as yet another "contract" or agreement to exchange a service that won't be needed forever. Sadly, some people think that the bittersweet easy-come-easy-go life is as good as it gets, as they uphold their spiritual gains and deny a deeper sense of human frustration and deprivation to be never quite as deeply successful or securely happy as they can fantasize.<br><br>
Fortunately, the Path of Healing is not forever, although again a shift of beliefs is required to move on when we are ready. At some point, enough of our inner world has been healed, so that our self-love is stable and confident to keep us feeling centered and loved in every situation, self-guaranteed. What happens then is nothing short of a miracle, one that I am still discovering. New kinds of relationships start to arrive, ones that we have never seen before. A level of Spirit and the community of souls is always rock-solid there for us, increasingly manifesting with growth opportunities that never end, assignments that are open and flexible, unlimited connections that are not just temporary. Karma becomes dharma, the flow of the universe. Relationships develop that we always grow more into and never out of, and why not? At this point we have mastered the art of always being there for ourselves, so of course now there can be friends and beloveds who are always there for us too. <br><br>
Welcome to the Path of Endless Joy! It is something you know in your heart is possible. It is the pearl of great price, it is the rock upon which the house of the soul is built. We will thus discuss our glimpses and steps to go from here to there, as there is where we are all destined to.<br><br>
The meeting will be from 7 pm until 9 pm. RSVP requested. Please update your RSVP if you are unable to attend, to allow others to attend. Payment is $10 to help rent the space, and can be made in person. Anyone who cannot afford this is encouraged to attend anyway and should contact Carl beforehand.<br><br>
For directions and other information about location please visit the http://www.swedenborgchapel.com Cambridge Swedenborg Chapel website. If you're driving in be sure to pack tightly into the little lot on the side which can fit about 8 cars, otherwise expect to look for parking such as down Kirkland to the left and away from Harvard, at the next big cross street with Beacon there are some meters.<br><br>
Carl J. Schroederhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17051319009194913124noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1962472874163319823.post-51969642093336182902012-08-14T11:53:00.001-07:002012-08-29T15:34:11.363-07:00Letting go...Someone posted on facebook that Joseph Campbell said "We must be willing to let go of the life we planned so as to have the life that is waiting for us."<br><br>
My spontaneous comment was:<br><br>
<blockquote>I would say it's not so much about letting go what we
want, as letting go the idea that we aren't already on our way to
getting it. It's the insistent disappointment and fear that we won't
ever have what we want that blocks us from working with what we have
now to fully reach it. It's like if there are 10 steps to getting what
we want, and the universe says yes here is step 1, we're refusing to
take that step if we don't see the connection and just say no, I
should already be done by now. The universe is saying it's fine, the
future you has it, feel it, become. A part of you is there and that's
how you desire it, the rest of you is here and moving closer to
conscious experience, so let's close the gap with another lesson. The
only reason "letting go" ever works is if that helps us get into the
moment to receive love and take the next steps naturally, until the
universe says surprise, you made it! Letting go doesn't work and
causes more pain if a person hears it as saying give up, stop
desiring. Desire is always needed to manifest anything.</blockquote><br>
... I will admit to feeling reactive on this, obviously there are things I'm working on. I'm trying to find the right co-creative balance with the universe, since I believe all that happens comes from partnership. People who say I surrender, God's will be done, miss the point that God is waiting for us to decide what we want to try. Such people will get samples of possibilities based on other people deciding for them, and probably have a compromised life. Likewise, people who say I want whatever I say right now miss the other point, that there is balance and cooperation for deeper lessons of self-discovery. Even though the universe says yes to every choice, there are steps it gives to transform us there. And thank goodness for that, because those steps give us time to evaluate, to refine or adjust our choices as we learn deeper things about ourselves, our values, and real destined talents. Ultimately, the universe wants and needs us to be authentically joyfully contributing from our souls, that's why it has some input on the life that is "waiting for us".<br><br>
Carl J. Schroederhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17051319009194913124noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1962472874163319823.post-70114782621942155322012-08-12T16:16:00.002-07:002012-08-12T16:30:41.101-07:00Horatio AlgernonOk, I'm going to try for a meme pun: "Yes, it was just another Horatio Algernon story, a sad tale of rags to riches to rags again." There, I said it, maybe now it will spread and leave me alone! :)<br><br>
references: Horatio Alger is the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horatio_Alger_myth">American myth</a> of rags to riches, that if one can make it by hard work then everyone should and can. Flowers for Algernon is the award-winning story of a retarded janitor named Charlie who is given an experimental operation to make him a genius; this was first tested on a mouse named Algernon. It works, and Charlie becomes superhuman, and miserable to finally understand all the unnecessary injustice in the world, starting from the teasing he used to get for being retarded which he once mistook for popularity. Then the process reverses, and Charlie is doubly miserable to become retarded again with only a confused memory that he was once more than he is now.<br><br>
Publisher's didn't want the story at first, they all told the author to change it for a Horatio Alger ending where Charlie stays a genius, solves the world's problems, makes friends with everyone, marries the girl of his dreams and lives happily ever after - but the author refused, and now the book is a modern classic. I see it as a tragic parable of human spiritual progress. When you wake up to your soul you gain a genius that realizes the world didn't have to be this way, but you cannot change it alone, though you may well fantasize for a while. You must learn to mourn so deeply and profoundly that you finally find a way to rejoin the normal world with an abnormal half-remembered higher perspective and vision, fated to spend the rest of your life trying to make a difference against all the odds of an unenlightened system. The spiritual awakening is a one-way door: you can never forget, and yet still you must go back to the way you were. This is a serious thing that changes your life forever, kind of like taking the red pill or the blue pill as seen in the Matrix movie. That is why the spiritual experience cannot be pushed on people before they are ready, they will refuse and misunderstand your best of intentions from deeper defenses than they can comprehend.<br><br>
To combine the Algernon parable with the American success myth of Horatio Alger, well, call me or my muse perverse, but maybe that's what America is really about, as we lead the New Age not to mention the economic cycles of boom and bust. We Americans thought (many still do) that we were going to raise the world's standard of living in our superior never-ending technologically driven prosperity, but instead by our ideals we have raised a tragic awareness of paradise lost that is bittersweet. I fundamentally believe and experience that the diversity and tolerance of this country - imperfect yes, but much greater and deeper than most other places on Earth - creates conditions for enlightment that are our true greatest asset. People come here to be free, to realize the American dream, and the soul is reborn in ways that no one could have foreseen.<br><br>
God bless America, God bless the whole Earth, and God help an awakening humanity.<br><br>Carl J. Schroederhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17051319009194913124noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1962472874163319823.post-76378217990972035072012-08-06T15:27:00.001-07:002012-08-06T15:31:16.387-07:00Noismism... and now a little humor to lighten the Weltschmerz ...<br><br><br>
<font size=+2>No • Ism • Ism</font><br><br>
A noismist believes that the world is comprised only of free agent individuals who are fully transparent to everyone but themselves. There are no movements, no schools, no ideologies. No groups, no isms, no families, no histories, no karmas. All of that stuff is totally fascinating and meaningful, and in the final analysis irrelevant. Just a bunch of invented and shared justifications for what a person really wants to do with you right now, and still you wouldn’t have guessed, it didn’t follow. If you approach people in this light, you won’t get fooled again. They’re just looking to behave as they’ve been wanting to, by building up the courage of a context and pretext in which to act with impunity. Direct sensing of intentions is the goal of the noismist.<br><br>
“Excuse me, are you looking for someone to grow with and love? Are you looking for someone to blame and punish? Come on, you can admit it to me, if not to yourself. I won’t judge, I won’t tell. It’s just that I can’t believe anything you’ve said about yourself, because it fails to explain you. I’ve met people who have been through everything that you have, and they didn’t act like you at all. This is just the way you are, doing what you want, isn’t it? Sure it is, and if you don’t like it then change, but don’t shoot the messenger. Hey, stop that! Okay, I’m outta here!”<br><br>
Public noismists tend to be short-lived. How many people are privately noismist remains unknown.<br><br>Carl J. Schroederhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17051319009194913124noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1962472874163319823.post-36135649351734794262012-08-05T15:34:00.001-07:002012-09-05T04:27:55.340-07:00Our HomeI'm so excited to have been pointed to a great recent movie called "Astral City: A Spiritual Journey" by a new friend! Wow!! How did I miss this one?? <br><br>
From 2001 to 2009 I played a deconstructivist movie reviewer at the MysticalMovieGuide.com, until I burned out on sifting through the entertainment cliches to uphold a few shards of spiritual truth. Since then I've shifted to research and writing for my own classes and book, so I'm behind on the cultural news.<br><br>
Only last month I finally saw the remarkable US film "The Adjustment Bureau", released in early 2011. An exciting big-budget fantasy that showcases many spiritual truths from a visionary first-time writer/director, this was extremely atypical for Hollywood and clearly sponsored by holy spirit. It's a romantic thriller about a couple confronting God and the angelic realm to establish their free will right to be together in love, regardless the karmic impact for a system that would keep them apart to serve social order. Right on, karma busters! That made me cry, and reminded me of what a great movie can do. <br><br>
Now "Astral City" takes me to a whole new level, by moving into territory that is 100% spiritual, otherworldly, and true! Based on the best-selling book "Nosso Lar" (Portugeuse for Our Home), this is the autobiography of a spirit, dictated through a famous Brazilian medium.<br><br>
"Astral City: A Spiritual Journey" is the movie your soul has been waiting for! Biggest Brazilian production ever made, released there fall 2010, finally into the US just in time for 2012. So why isn't everyone talking about it? This is the true story of a spirit working his way up the astral plane, as told by the deceased doctor Andre Luis channeled through the late great spiritualist writer Chico Xavier. Xavier is an absolute phenom in Brazil, little known in the US or Europe, who wrote over 400 books, many extremely popular, and donated all the proceeds to charity because he could take no credit, all came from the spiritual world. <br><br>
In this great film adaptation of Xavier's most popular book, you will see the heaveny city Our Home on the astral mountain top from which Andre Luis learned the real meaning of life, and many other moving powerful scenes. Things start a little pedagogical and melodramatic in purgatory, but great understated emotional expressions from fine actors really help open up the viewer to the beautiful special effects that soon follow. It's funny how literally accurate religion can be, what with people pointing to the sky for heaven. The energetic fields of the earth do extend upward, and most human spirits work their way toward utopian communities which are on the top of the astral plane in the upper atmosphere. The astral plane, as you may know from the term's popularization by Theosophy, is the energy of emotions and also an actual nonphysical place. <br><br>
Here's <a href="http://www.imdb.com/video/imdb/vi4212432409/">the film's trailer</a> at the internet movie database where you can read more about the production. You can then buy the dvd or stream the whole movie <a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Dmovies-tv&field-keywords=astral+city">on amazon</a> for a fee, and find related videos <a href="http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=astral+city">on youtube</a>.<br><br>
So after seeing the film and crowing about it on facebook to friends, naturally the next step was to buy the book. Now this gets interesting - I check out the comments, which are not many and mostly from spiritualists, as might be expected. One however is a suffering Catholic who questions the views of karma espoused by the film. I agree, that was one issue I had too. Technically, I would regard the view of the afterlife seen in the film as a mid-level evolutionary step in which a lot of spirits feel ties to families on Earth and eagerly reincarnate to be with them regardless of personal costs. It's a popular path and there's nothing wrong with it, unless you're ready for something else. Andre Luis himself suggests one alternative, since he didn't reincarnate, he stayed longer in the astral to refine his understandings and dictate his story directly to Xavier on the Earth.<br><br>
Below is my reply to the comment and discussion thread which is linked. I have no right or need to reproduce other people's text, as I think my points speak for themselves. I've clearly got my own little theme going on with karmic liberation for 2012, so this is just another facet I've sincerely displayed, worth preserving here.<br><br>
Thanks for reading, and all the best to you on your own journey to freedom and joy! I'm reminded of a message I got from Archangel Michael to help me release some old issues: "Go to the level at which you are healed."<br><br>
From <a href="http://www.amazon.com/review/R1C46K6AP5LISZ/ref=cm_cd_pg_oldest?ie=UTF8&asin=8598161217&cdForum=Fx36QKHQNL0LQR&cdPage=1&cdSort=newest&cdThread=Tx2VGNET5BSFCLN&store=books#wasThisHelpful">Amazon comment Thread for book "Nosso Lar"</a><br><br>
Your post, in reply to an earlier post on Aug 5, 2012 2:05:38 PM PDT <br>
Carl J. Schroeder says:<br><br>
I was drawn to the movie Astral City, then to the book it was based on Nosso Lar, then to your comment on the book here on Amazon, then to the discussion that followed, and then as far as your last revealing reply here. May I add my perspective? <br><br>
I'm not a spiritist, I'm a little of many things, and I agree with you on the unfairness and damage that is possible under karma. I too have suffered from similar karmic connections, I know where you are coming from. <br><br>
Karma is a choice! It is the old system, it is not the only way. Jesus was coming from a new way, that is why he took on humanity's pain in one last great karmic act and died that we might live. "Let the dead bury the dead, come, follow me." I believe the world changed when he rose from the grave.<br><br>
Karma is an unmerited loyalty to soul family, and it can work because people must purify themselves to handle their cruel relatives. Known or unknown, our psychic connections impact us tremendously, and can force us to grow, especially as we react from what they mirror inside of us.<br><br>
But there will always be free will, and at some point you have to let go with a totality of forgiveness that respects each person's own power and potential, in order to honor your own path upward. Perhaps this is the "tough love" that people must learn. <br><br>
How long will I let another person's choices destroy me? I am done, I am going to where I belong. I wish to follow the flow of the universe, and so I must give up on the karma and enter the dharma. If I still have lessons to learn, they can be taught lovingly, I don't have to suffer any loyalties to the cruel and ignorant anymore. <br><br>
I thought it was a great scene in the movie when Andre was being rescued from the Umbral. The self-damning said "no, not him! don't save him!", but when the healing guide reached out a hand to them they all recoiled, not wanting to be saved themselves. So the guide gave up and turned and took Andre to the heavenly city. That sums up the end of karma to me, you offer, they don't accept, but you accept, you are done. Whether or not spiritists continue to learn in karmic systems is their choice, but it is not the only way, and the seeds of leaving karma are in their acknowledgment of everyone makes their own choices for how to live.<br><br>
You sound like you have a lot of healing to do. Get it if you want! I would recommend trying various alternative healers and ask them to clear your energetic connections to people and spirits who aren't good for you, find whatever works. Focus on you, take care of yourself proudly, do it for God if you cannot for yourself. God is counting on you to be the steward of your precious true self, to reach your potential to serve naturally from your joyful uniqueness, authority questioning and all, and not as a spiritual worker in a system for points. You seem sensitive to any duty that isn't sensitive to you; you've probably been enslaved and abused by karmic ties.<br><br>
Let go whatever guilt or ideas you have that keep you exposed to suffering in a karmic system. Be that best person you can be, because that is the real you, and that is your ticket to freedom. You have no obligations to grow in a way that doesn't suit you. There are many options for returning to a state of grace health and joy in this vast universe, there is not just one church or Nosso Lar.<br><br>
ps - I want to add personally in a way that isn't the main point but shares human context. I wasn't raised catholic, but discovered a past life as a catholic medieval mystic nun in 1998. Some thought it was ego because she was famous, but I was in touch with a very deep life-transformation. I immediately felt a great love of the karmic system, and wanted to reunite with all the souls I'd been with then and in other lifetimes. The historical records helped me recognize resonances when they showed up in answer to prayer. <br><br>
I did it! It took me 14 years but I found a huge soul family reincarnated from then and other past lives as well. A fascinating, magical, deeply spiritual journey for me! And guess what, it was not a lovefest, it was mess of people and issues, all over the place. I could've kept working and suffering with them for the rest of my life, but I got it! That was enough.<br><br>
I'm done with karma, it forces you to purify and learn about your origins until you're ready to go to a new place. Now I don't care about karma anymore, I could be meeting you for the hundredth lifetime or the first. Here now what are we doing, that's what matters, all else is forgiven. No clinging, no ties, only love that gives and lets go and receives in the present. If we're good to stay together we will, as an ongoing commitment to good energy.<br><br>
This karma-free loyalty to the spiritual self gives a life that is both merit based, ie. do your good works, and soul based, ie. you deserve just for being. Nobody does good or looks good to get anything, they are what they are now already. Nobody gets fooled or stuck on past loyalties or future potentials, it's all your choices now. Karma is an endless prison, it never releases anyone, but everyone holds their own key to just leave when they're ready. <br><br>
Here's a site of a friend who researches past lives, soul families, and karma extensively. Walter Semkiw works with Kevin Ryerson and together I've found they back a lot of my experiences in this area, so check it out if you like: <a href="www.iisis.net">www.iisis.net</a><br><br>
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The discussion at amazon has continued, so again I'll just preserve my replies here which contain my views, and for full context you can visit that thread at <a href="http://www.amazon.com/review/R1C46K6AP5LISZ/ref=cm_cd_pg_oldest?ie=UTF8&asin=8598161217&cdForum=Fx36QKHQNL0LQR&cdPage=1&cdSort=newest&cdThread=Tx2VGNET5BSFCLN&store=books#wasThisHelpful">Amazon comment Thread for book "Nosso Lar"</a><br><br>
Your post, in reply to an earlier post on Aug 7, 2012 7:01:45 PM PDT<br>
Carl J. Schroeder says:<br><br>
I realized a karma-related question for Steve or any of the spiritists in this thread who know more about the theology of Nosso Lar. Is there a door to rebirth from the Umbral purgatory, those hellish lower astral planes? I mean, the movie depicted the process of reincarnation as involving a long responsible planning process with top guides of the heavenly cities at the top of the astral, involving years of preparation and waiting to be granted permission. At that rate, people wouldn't get reborn very quickly, and would be mature and have wonderful life intentions. So where are all the messed up people down here coming from, especially the disturbed and the cruel who make karmic ties such a hell for so many? That looks to me like personalities straight out of the Umbral, not the refined graduates of the highest astral cities. Perhaps this is covered in the book or other works by Andre and Chico?<br><br>
(Steve basically replied that the Umbral is a purgatory-like passing through zone for spirits that you get stuck in as long as you have ego problems, so there's no way you could reincarnate from there, next stop is higher realms. If there are a lot of badly behaving people coming onto Earth, they'd be incarnating from other dimensions and planets, not Earth's Umbral, and they'd be coming here after making an "I'll behave" promise to God like everyone who gets permission to incarnate.)<br><br>
Your post, in reply to an earlier post on Aug 28, 2012 1:14:50 PM PDT<br>
Carl J. Schroeder says:<br><br>
Hey Steve, a belated thanks to you for your detailed excellent reply. I basically agree with all that you say, but believe in extensions on the material too. For one thing, I believe that lifetimes are much more overlapping and parallel than the long steady spiritual growth sequence can suggest. This is a common problem I find in systems that teach reincarnation, they can't imagine people reincarnating all over the place/time as they do. I think (I know) there are some other me's in the world right now, and that I've had more overlapping lifetimes than a sequence provides. I simply see that a soul sends out as many lifetimes as it wants or needs, and we can become soul-like in relating to as many of them as another "me" as we can handle. Especially in the speeded-up modern times we're in, there's no way a soul wants to miss out on all the experiences by having only 1 or 2 lifetimes a century.<br><br>
The consequence for karma is that a person who did bad things in their lifetime can certainly be working it out in the umbral purgatory after dying. But at the same time they have other selves back in the world already/still, doing related bad deeds in psychic connection. So in a way, they're already reincarnated straight from the umbral. This accounts for a lot of people who react like they're in a hellish place no matter how good their life is, because another part of themselves is concurrently in the umbral. This creates problems for the hope of sequential reformation. Any lifetime that does reform itself only becomes a good influence to others that can be ignored by the others as they choose. It's very interactive and simultaneous, which doesn't really invalidate the sequential spiritual self-improvement model, but makes it more subtle and complex and ultimately more powerful. A tipping point of many lifetimes waking up and reforming together becomes possible!<br><br>
Because of this multiplicity going on, I don't see the need for a lot of extraterrestrial souls getting born here to account for so many new people, good or bad, although a certain number of ET incarnations are certainly happening. Many come from more evolved worlds to raise the vibration with great people. If we're allowing a lot of bad apples onto Earth from less-evolved places, well, we can just stop tolerating that, individually and collectively. I was once shown in meditation that a number of Nazis were incarnated from a planet of such homogeneity that they freaked out at Earth's diversity and thought genocide was a naturally good thing, and they were still rather unrepentent about it. Such spirits do not need to be here.<br><br>
The other limitation I see with the linear reincarnation model is the assumption that spirits are always refining and progressing, getting permission to come back to Earth only when they have significantly matured and promise to not make the same mistakes again. At that rate, even allowing for some backsliding, wouldn't Earth have become a much better place long ago? Steve Pinkerton's fascinating new book "Angels of our better nature" does present inspiring evidence that humanity has become steadily more civilized and peaceful over the centuries, so that's the good news. But most people don't believe it because humanity's progress has been relatively slow, so the linear maturing model seems overly optimistic, unable to account for real history.<br><br>
The difference I believe comes from the simpler fact that we create our own reality down here as well as up there, and so many people allow for and even depend on the presence of incarnated evil. So promises to behave don't matter, when the fact is there are roles being demanded and slots to fill, and reincarnated reformed spirits backslide easily by popular demand. What will really clean things up on Earth is not so much that we attain heights of maturity when we're in heavenly higher realms, but when we stop covertly (but rather obviously) relying on evil in our thinking and entertainment down here. All kinds of hidden agendas to be powerless, to blame, to manipulate, to punish, and to get pleasure from pain, bring out the worst in everyone, creating a race to the bottom. <br><br>
Raising consciousness "down here" is what will bring out the potentials that everyone has developed to varying degrees "up there". I think spirits like Andre who increasingly opt to not rush to reincarnate but rather transmit their higher view through channels on Earth are evidencing that simple fact. They know that belief systems need to change to bring out the best that everyone already has developed in spirit but which gets shouted-down once they're incarnated, regardless of how many promises to behave better get made from the spirit side.<br><br>
Whaddya think? And let me know your email if you want to continue offline, but hopefully everyone has enjoyed this discussion, including our fine Catholic friend who started this thread.<br><br>
all the best,<br>
Carl<br><br><br>
Your post, in reply to an earlier post on Aug 29, 2012 3:27:43 PM PDT<br>
Carl J. Schroeder says:<br><br>
Interesting replies, thanks Steve and Peter!<br><br>
To Steve I would say, hmm, did I touch a nerve? Suddenly you sound more sure and judgmental than before. I get that you're saying I'm absolutely wrong and misled, but I'm not as clear on the why. As I said in my post, I don't see why the potential of more concurrency in lifetimes invalidates the idea of spiritual evolution, only that it makes it more dynamic and invests the spirit of each lifetime with more, not less, responsibility for their actions. We can then relate to clusters of our soul's lifetimes in whatever sequences make sense for our growth, so linear reincarnating and cause-effect karma are a subset of the total possibilities. <br><br>
Just because someone is dead doesn't mean they know everything, just that hopefully they have a better afterlife perspective on their own experiences. So if a lot of spirits teach reincarnation and karma a certain way, they can be perfectly correct for their path, and still not exclude the possibility of other ways to achieve the same ultimate goals of spiritual evolution toward the divine state. I don't feel like a fool who is rushing in where angels fear to tread. There are a number of respected channeled entities from very high levels who teach exactly what I'm saying, including Lazaris and Ahtun Re. I didn't just make it up, I simply developed my own perspectives and opinions which ended up agreeing with them.<br><br>
To Peter I would say thank you for the candor and humility of more possible explanations. I agree that a concurrency of archetypal choices can account for a lot of connections between individuals who are not the same soul. Kindred souls, soulmates, twin flames, all kinds of great relationships are possible. I've had some short-term difficulties distinguishing myself from the past lives of my very closest spirit guides, but ultimately they diverged while my past lives kept converging with me. It's perfectly healthy to not know until you know. So while I sometimes erred on the side of believing in a reincarnation connection, other people can err on the side of disbelieving. Here's a link to a page where the man who has been identified by friends of mine as the reincarnation of William James agrees that the matches between James' circle and his circle are uncanny (souls travel in groups), but he's not ready to believe in reincarnation. Jungian style synchronistic archetypal resonance he calls it: http://www.mishlove.com/WilliamJames/matches.htm<br><br>
And Peter, your ongoing crusade against karma makes me smile. As I've said before I agree that karma has its limits of benefit, but you seem so hurt that I wonder if you aren't especially chafing at the way certain schools teach karma. There are different ways it gets explained, some more free-will crushing than others. I do believe there exist group karmas, family karmas, nation karmas, etc, and these could be particularly stifling while amorphously difficult to shake. I wonder if some of these have you feeling trapped beyond the karmas with individuals, which is what I've focussed on releasing and found perfectly liberating for all levels of guilt and abuse. I used to get my panties in a twist over the inter-Abrahamic religious conflicts for example, but that has lifted as I let go of the people in my life that probably embodied those conflicts for me in lifetimes back. It's always helpful to get a face on things, I find love and its lack to be specific not general problems.<br><br>
all bests,<br>
Carl<br><br><br>
Your post, in reply to an earlier post on Sep 4, 2012 3:57:19 PM PDT<br>
Carl J. Schroeder says:<br>
Hi Steve,<br><br>
Thanks for your candid reply, I see you are more playful than I thought at first. I appreciate that.<br><br>
I also think you're an amazing scholar with great scholarly strengths. I'm not so much a scholar, I'm into my own direct experiences, and I just cross paths with stuff and decide what it means to me then.<br><br>
Multiple-me's makes perfect sense to me. Time is simultaneous, different configurations of my soul make for different incarnations and personalities, and they're all alive affecting each other. I know that even people who believe in reincarnation have a hard time with this. Perhaps I'm comfortable because I came to reincarnation from my own route of dialoguing with my sub-personalities, the different aspects of myself, and then discovering oh, these people in my soul have their entire own lives and realities in other times and spaces from me, we're all very real, this is awesome! So some of the other me's are what people call past lives, some are parallel lives, some are my own developmental stages in this life (inner child for example). <br><br>
Since you bring up the importance of clear definitions, I would point out the elephant in the room which is the term karma itself. It's a ridiculously overused word, and it's obvious to me that everyone has their own set of working definitions, mostly amorphous. All this talk of debt and rewards doesn't make sense to me for example. We have free will, we create our own reality, and there's no one handing out gold stars or demerits. I see karma as just the developing of a shared experience with someone that isn't complete or concluded for growth. It still doesn't mean that we owe anyone or they owe us, because they can go complete that experience with someone else and so can we at any time. Pay it forward, for example.<br><br>
I think one of the worst implications I hear in talk of karma is that we absolutely have to do our growth with certain individuals. That is in my mind very damaging and contrary to free will. If I have a shared incomplete growth process from 1000 years ago with someone that I want to get back to someday, they have every choice and right to have gone in different directions from me. They can be completely out of sync and inappropriate for me to finish my growth lesson when I get around to wanting and needing that lesson. So I need to be flexible and let the universe bring me someone with a matching unfinished lesson who is in sync with me now, not then. <br><br>
Just because I started a lesson with someone doesn't mean I have to wait for them to decide to be nice and productive with me. It would be like if you come back to class the next day and find out your lab partner has quit school, and your teacher says sorry, you'll just have to wait to see if they ever decide to return, we can't possibly assign you another lab partner, nor could they ever get anyone else but you to finish their degree. What? I'd find another school if that happened, ha! <br><br>
I know that my attitude is not popular, and you're welcome to denounce it as taking shortcuts and breaking the system and incurring more karma than ever. Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying there's a way to deny responsibility, to avoid the people we've interacted with. The universe will bring to us first those with whom we've had prior dealings, and that is the basis of karma. We won't get past them until we learn to accept and not judge them for who they are. And that must include allowing them to be uncooperative and unwilling to complete a lesson with us, to let them go and find someone else more suitable for our spiritual development. <br><br>
I can say from my own experience that growth is growth, and love is love. No way I'm staying with some unloving personality just because of some shared karmic history. That's like spiritual incest, to have to marry within a family of spiritual origins, it's not even healthy on so many levels! Free will changes everything, free will means the universe can and must recombine as needed for love, not dogma. We're always free to ask the universe for someone truly compatible for what we want to accomplish, and that's how we learn to really to enjoy our life and place in creation!<br><br>
best wishes,<br>
Carl<br><br><br>
<i>As Steve continued to disagree with my views on karma as optional (sorry to burst my bubble), I realized this was a test of exactly my point. I could feel my old personality that would hold onto a disagreement, as if to lose an opportunity to be right and heard was a moment of cosmic importance. It is, but not the way I was imagining! I think of all those times that Hildegard had to be right, and if a person didn't agree she would say God is on my side, you can be wrong and there will be suffering from this, you'll see. And yes there was suffering, including her own. People think they have to make a final stand, but the universe illustrates the letting go principle exactly - people who hold onto disagreements go on to find other people to disagree with, and people who let go disagreements go on to find other people to enjoy more agreement with. Either way, there are more fish in the sea, and no one has stay anywhere they don't want to. <br><br> Like it or not, by their choices for energies, people represent energies, and by our choices for energies, we meet some kinds of people and not others. Fortunately we can hold theoretical ideals that we can talk about and hopefully guide ourselves toward, but day to day we live energetic choices that we must walk from and within. Change your ideals if you feel hopeless, and then change your daily choices if your life is not ideal. Love or conflict, that is your ideal and daily choice. How much love do you want in your life?</i><br><br><br>
Your post, in reply to an earlier post on Sep 5, 2012 3:23:31 AM PDT<br>
Carl J. Schroeder says:<br><br>
Hey Steve, no bubbles bursting here, lol! We've had our respectful interaction, we're both pursuing our values in full sincerity, all is well in my opinion. If this is a karmic reunion we've had, then I consider it fulfilled, and you're welcome to too, or not, that is your choice. If you worry about me then you'll be in your bubble, if I worry about you then I'll be in my bubble, we each create our own reality and we have neither need nor ability to change each other's opinions or choices. I've got other things to do and other people to interact with, you do too I'm sure.<br><br>
happy trails!<br>
Carl<br><br><br>Carl J. Schroederhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17051319009194913124noreply@blogger.com2