... and now a little humor to lighten the Weltschmerz ...
No • Ism • Ism
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.
“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!”
Public noismists tend to be short-lived. How many people are privately noismist remains unknown.
Monday, August 6, 2012
Sunday, August 5, 2012
Our Home
I'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??
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.
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.
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.
"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.
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.
Here's the film's trailer at the internet movie database where you can read more about the production. You can then buy the dvd or stream the whole movie on amazon for a fee, and find related videos on youtube.
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.
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.
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."
From Amazon comment Thread for book "Nosso Lar"
Your post, in reply to an earlier post on Aug 5, 2012 2:05:38 PM PDT
Carl J. Schroeder says:
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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: www.iisis.net
========================
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 Amazon comment Thread for book "Nosso Lar"
Your post, in reply to an earlier post on Aug 7, 2012 7:01:45 PM PDT
Carl J. Schroeder says:
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?
(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.)
Your post, in reply to an earlier post on Aug 28, 2012 1:14:50 PM PDT
Carl J. Schroeder says:
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.
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!
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
all the best,
Carl
Your post, in reply to an earlier post on Aug 29, 2012 3:27:43 PM PDT
Carl J. Schroeder says:
Interesting replies, thanks Steve and Peter!
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.
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.
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
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.
all bests,
Carl
Your post, in reply to an earlier post on Sep 4, 2012 3:57:19 PM PDT
Carl J. Schroeder says:
Hi Steve,
Thanks for your candid reply, I see you are more playful than I thought at first. I appreciate that.
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.
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).
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.
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.
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!
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.
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!
best wishes,
Carl
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.
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?
Your post, in reply to an earlier post on Sep 5, 2012 3:23:31 AM PDT
Carl J. Schroeder says:
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.
happy trails!
Carl
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.
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.
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.
"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.
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.
Here's the film's trailer at the internet movie database where you can read more about the production. You can then buy the dvd or stream the whole movie on amazon for a fee, and find related videos on youtube.
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.
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.
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."
From Amazon comment Thread for book "Nosso Lar"
Your post, in reply to an earlier post on Aug 5, 2012 2:05:38 PM PDT
Carl J. Schroeder says:
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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: www.iisis.net
========================
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 Amazon comment Thread for book "Nosso Lar"
Your post, in reply to an earlier post on Aug 7, 2012 7:01:45 PM PDT
Carl J. Schroeder says:
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?
(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.)
Your post, in reply to an earlier post on Aug 28, 2012 1:14:50 PM PDT
Carl J. Schroeder says:
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.
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!
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
all the best,
Carl
Your post, in reply to an earlier post on Aug 29, 2012 3:27:43 PM PDT
Carl J. Schroeder says:
Interesting replies, thanks Steve and Peter!
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.
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.
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
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.
all bests,
Carl
Your post, in reply to an earlier post on Sep 4, 2012 3:57:19 PM PDT
Carl J. Schroeder says:
Hi Steve,
Thanks for your candid reply, I see you are more playful than I thought at first. I appreciate that.
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.
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).
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.
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.
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!
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.
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!
best wishes,
Carl
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.
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?
Your post, in reply to an earlier post on Sep 5, 2012 3:23:31 AM PDT
Carl J. Schroeder says:
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.
happy trails!
Carl
Sunday, July 22, 2012
a sad lesson in real energy
My country is abuzz over the inconceivable horror of the batman movie massacre of early Friday morning, when a heavily armed but previously mild-mannered intelligent university student burst into the midnight showing of the final installment of the ulta-violent Dark Knight trilogy in Aurora Colorado and translated movie screen mayhem into bloody killing reality. The young man turned sociopath wore body armour purchased on the internet, carried legally acquired assault weapons, and patterned a sudden merciless rampage after the so-called entertainment of the famous Joker character from the previous installment of the best-selling franchise. Police have reported that the killer dyed his hair red, called himself the Joker, used a shotgun like the Joker, and burst into the theatre with smoke bombs and a barrage of ammunition in the Joker’s style. The attack began in parallel with film scene explosions, so the audience first thought it was all in the movie, and then guessed it was a publicity stunt for more sensation since the midnight showing was a much-anticipated nation-wide industry event. 70 people were shot in a total war zone descent into hell, 12 dead within minutes, and security was increased at continued showings of the film around the country as people feared for the safety of their children still looking forward to the movie’s violence at their local Cineplex. Out of respect for the dead, Hollywood would delay announcement of box office receipts, expected to fall short of predictions after the tragedy but still break records. The big-money movie features many horrors including a similar shooting massacre of innocent audience at a sports arena, and is rated PG-13, which is supposed to mean no one under 13 is allowed to get in. I have yet to see any reports that question why victims under that age were among the real massacre’s dead, the youngest being 6.
The Joker was such a sickening character of the second Dark Knight film that the actor playing him, Heath Ledger, became increasingly disturbed and died on an overdose of medications prescribed to calm him from the experience. This was reminiscent of other Hollywood abuses like when it got 15 year old actress Judy Garland hooked on drugs to push her through the shooting schedule of The Wizard of Oz, which led to the lifelong addiction that eventually killed her. But only praise was heard for Ledger’s talent and performance, and to this day movie fans are glad to have at least had Ledger’s career end on such a “brilliant” note as to have brought a remorseless psychotic killer to unforgettable life. This Joker character is easily recognizable in toy store aisles, since the licensing of the mass murderer is highly profitable for children to play with alongside Batman, who is himself no longer the funny posing hero of the 1960’s era TV shows that I grew up with in which bumbling silly villains get easily defeated to depict however clumsily that goodness will prevail. Batman was reinvented for a new jaded generation as just another alienated dangerous vigilante hiding in a costume and armed to the teeth with deadly technology.
Flush with more cash than any charity to feed starving children could ever dream for, Hollywood cranks out the ever grander spectacles of extreme entertainment soaked in blood, featuring inhuman torture and mass explosive murdering, in hopes of still finding thrills and shocks for sensation-numbed audiences hungry for their next escape from reality. Millions consume this stuff obsessively, praising the craft of violence as art and bringing their whole families, never suspecting that the barrage of disturbing thoughts and feelings could ever effect anyone beyond the exit of the theatre or after the TV is turned off.
How, why, could people be so willfully blind? Energy is real! There is no reality-proof steel door separating physical experience from internal imagination, objective manifestation from personal sensation. Your thoughts and feelings are your open portal to an outside world, so where in the world have you been going? Multimedia is especially potent, so when you play a video game or watch a TV show or movie of someone getting killed, you are actually connecting psychically to someone getting killed somewhere. Yes! This is not theoretical, this is what gives reality a real feeling, this is how the universe works. If you’re wise to this, you can make use of upsetting scenes as you contemplate them to find your own aware healing response, to both become more human and help someone somewhere in space and time, which of course the mind transcends easily. Maybe the suffering one will turn out to be you in your own past life, maybe they’re a person you will love if you ever get to meet them, or maybe you will never know who it is at your current level of consciousness. At any rate, thank God you can care and make a difference from your human beingness! This is how intention makes all the difference, so reports and depictions of violence can become a channel you tune into with compassion to make the world a better place. Thus violence in stories cannot be simply outlawed, since that would just be looking the other way from truth. Puritans closed the Globe theatre of Shakespeare in 17th century England around the same time they were migrating to New England to begin exterminating Native Americans, so some of the best plays to make us think and feel more human have long been sanctimoniously opposed by those who turn around and do their worse cruelties elsewhere.
Guns and films don’t kill people, people kill people, so of course easy access to guns and violent ideas encourage people to kill! The senseless unaware enjoyment of violent sensations can and must be addressed in the population with basic startling education. It’s too easy for Hollywood to defend itself as just giving people what they want; why aren’t the actors and writes caring about themselves enough to eulogize Heath Ledger for what really killed him, an evil energy that was employed to sell a movie? Murder is deadly serious in any form, and the talking picture industry is hyper-real when it comes to what it can push your brain to think and feel, thus affecting your body and by its extension your world. The more you pretend a killing in your senses isn’t happening somewhere, the closer killing comes. For the victims of one stupid thrill-ride in Aurora Colorado, inhuman cruelty stepped right off the silver screen to scar and take their lives forever in a new ground zero. The lesson can’t get more obvious: sensational energy is where reality begins! As with many horror franchises, the Joker character is no joke; its creators were inspired by a specific murderous non-human entity who is eager to injure as many humans as it can before people realize the fire they are playing with when they package violence for diversionary pleasure. All you have to do is open your heart a little to question how anyone can enjoy images of terror and pain, and all you have to do is dismiss your own humanity to think every feeling is as fun to feel as any other, the bigger the better. There are a lot of mislabeled poisons around today, but their effects are obvious to people have the courage to get with reality.
Science already reports with increasing mystification that there isn’t a clear disconnect between what you imagine and what will happen physically. It’s been long known that your body will react to what you visualize in your head the same ways as if it were happening outside, so that thinking about a threat can increase your adrenalin and heart rate, alter your brain chemistry, change your entire biology, and push you to react with increasing defensive impulsivity. Still, people prefer to say your internal state is just a thrill effect, nothing really lasting will come of it, and the world doesn’t care. But now it’s known that if you imagine exercising, your muscles will actually grow. How’s that for physical? It just goes on from there. Endless studies show that anything you can do to foster your internal peace, master your own mental states, and meditatively reduce stress will make you happier, healthier, smarter, more loved, more successful, and live a longer life. Who can really doubt that an entire sequence of impacts must exist from our thoughts and feelings to the events in our lives, except of course a society that doesn’t want responsibility for all the destructive moods it promotes as harmless fun for young and old. God help us if we cared, we might have to start looking at why we enjoy such things as violence and fantasies that injure people, real and imagined, and become compelled by our own humanity to change whole industries, economies, and lifestyles! Of course, how can we expect to make the world a better safer place without the deepest reviews of our values.
The occasional individual who loses all self-control to go on a killing spree is deranged and responsible for horrors most people hold themselves back from ever acting out, of course. The news reports all jump to reassure us of that simple fact. But millions of people imagine and enjoy the effects in their body of violence every day, as either done to others or themselves. Energy is real, and too many psycho-killers turn out to be frighteningly normal however lonely people until the day they snapped, because they were canaries in a coalmine that’s been long smoking and on fire. This is your life you are in charge of defending now, don’t wait for Hollywood to take care of you and those you love! Regard what you say and think as seriously as what you do, and stop patronizing the vendors of violence as entertainment. Teach yourself and your children to consider the human beings behind all those scenes of mayhem, whether staged for a film or reported in the news. You can’t imagine how much good you can do to say no to the sickness of current imagination, but you will see a better world.
I'm so so sorry for the innocent victims of Friday. Just before hearing the news, I was drawn that morning to listen to Tracey Grammer's classic song "Hey Ho". It always makes me cry, but I sobbed uncontrollably for so long I knew that something must have happened.
The Joker was such a sickening character of the second Dark Knight film that the actor playing him, Heath Ledger, became increasingly disturbed and died on an overdose of medications prescribed to calm him from the experience. This was reminiscent of other Hollywood abuses like when it got 15 year old actress Judy Garland hooked on drugs to push her through the shooting schedule of The Wizard of Oz, which led to the lifelong addiction that eventually killed her. But only praise was heard for Ledger’s talent and performance, and to this day movie fans are glad to have at least had Ledger’s career end on such a “brilliant” note as to have brought a remorseless psychotic killer to unforgettable life. This Joker character is easily recognizable in toy store aisles, since the licensing of the mass murderer is highly profitable for children to play with alongside Batman, who is himself no longer the funny posing hero of the 1960’s era TV shows that I grew up with in which bumbling silly villains get easily defeated to depict however clumsily that goodness will prevail. Batman was reinvented for a new jaded generation as just another alienated dangerous vigilante hiding in a costume and armed to the teeth with deadly technology.
Flush with more cash than any charity to feed starving children could ever dream for, Hollywood cranks out the ever grander spectacles of extreme entertainment soaked in blood, featuring inhuman torture and mass explosive murdering, in hopes of still finding thrills and shocks for sensation-numbed audiences hungry for their next escape from reality. Millions consume this stuff obsessively, praising the craft of violence as art and bringing their whole families, never suspecting that the barrage of disturbing thoughts and feelings could ever effect anyone beyond the exit of the theatre or after the TV is turned off.
How, why, could people be so willfully blind? Energy is real! There is no reality-proof steel door separating physical experience from internal imagination, objective manifestation from personal sensation. Your thoughts and feelings are your open portal to an outside world, so where in the world have you been going? Multimedia is especially potent, so when you play a video game or watch a TV show or movie of someone getting killed, you are actually connecting psychically to someone getting killed somewhere. Yes! This is not theoretical, this is what gives reality a real feeling, this is how the universe works. If you’re wise to this, you can make use of upsetting scenes as you contemplate them to find your own aware healing response, to both become more human and help someone somewhere in space and time, which of course the mind transcends easily. Maybe the suffering one will turn out to be you in your own past life, maybe they’re a person you will love if you ever get to meet them, or maybe you will never know who it is at your current level of consciousness. At any rate, thank God you can care and make a difference from your human beingness! This is how intention makes all the difference, so reports and depictions of violence can become a channel you tune into with compassion to make the world a better place. Thus violence in stories cannot be simply outlawed, since that would just be looking the other way from truth. Puritans closed the Globe theatre of Shakespeare in 17th century England around the same time they were migrating to New England to begin exterminating Native Americans, so some of the best plays to make us think and feel more human have long been sanctimoniously opposed by those who turn around and do their worse cruelties elsewhere.
Guns and films don’t kill people, people kill people, so of course easy access to guns and violent ideas encourage people to kill! The senseless unaware enjoyment of violent sensations can and must be addressed in the population with basic startling education. It’s too easy for Hollywood to defend itself as just giving people what they want; why aren’t the actors and writes caring about themselves enough to eulogize Heath Ledger for what really killed him, an evil energy that was employed to sell a movie? Murder is deadly serious in any form, and the talking picture industry is hyper-real when it comes to what it can push your brain to think and feel, thus affecting your body and by its extension your world. The more you pretend a killing in your senses isn’t happening somewhere, the closer killing comes. For the victims of one stupid thrill-ride in Aurora Colorado, inhuman cruelty stepped right off the silver screen to scar and take their lives forever in a new ground zero. The lesson can’t get more obvious: sensational energy is where reality begins! As with many horror franchises, the Joker character is no joke; its creators were inspired by a specific murderous non-human entity who is eager to injure as many humans as it can before people realize the fire they are playing with when they package violence for diversionary pleasure. All you have to do is open your heart a little to question how anyone can enjoy images of terror and pain, and all you have to do is dismiss your own humanity to think every feeling is as fun to feel as any other, the bigger the better. There are a lot of mislabeled poisons around today, but their effects are obvious to people have the courage to get with reality.
Science already reports with increasing mystification that there isn’t a clear disconnect between what you imagine and what will happen physically. It’s been long known that your body will react to what you visualize in your head the same ways as if it were happening outside, so that thinking about a threat can increase your adrenalin and heart rate, alter your brain chemistry, change your entire biology, and push you to react with increasing defensive impulsivity. Still, people prefer to say your internal state is just a thrill effect, nothing really lasting will come of it, and the world doesn’t care. But now it’s known that if you imagine exercising, your muscles will actually grow. How’s that for physical? It just goes on from there. Endless studies show that anything you can do to foster your internal peace, master your own mental states, and meditatively reduce stress will make you happier, healthier, smarter, more loved, more successful, and live a longer life. Who can really doubt that an entire sequence of impacts must exist from our thoughts and feelings to the events in our lives, except of course a society that doesn’t want responsibility for all the destructive moods it promotes as harmless fun for young and old. God help us if we cared, we might have to start looking at why we enjoy such things as violence and fantasies that injure people, real and imagined, and become compelled by our own humanity to change whole industries, economies, and lifestyles! Of course, how can we expect to make the world a better safer place without the deepest reviews of our values.
The occasional individual who loses all self-control to go on a killing spree is deranged and responsible for horrors most people hold themselves back from ever acting out, of course. The news reports all jump to reassure us of that simple fact. But millions of people imagine and enjoy the effects in their body of violence every day, as either done to others or themselves. Energy is real, and too many psycho-killers turn out to be frighteningly normal however lonely people until the day they snapped, because they were canaries in a coalmine that’s been long smoking and on fire. This is your life you are in charge of defending now, don’t wait for Hollywood to take care of you and those you love! Regard what you say and think as seriously as what you do, and stop patronizing the vendors of violence as entertainment. Teach yourself and your children to consider the human beings behind all those scenes of mayhem, whether staged for a film or reported in the news. You can’t imagine how much good you can do to say no to the sickness of current imagination, but you will see a better world.
I'm so so sorry for the innocent victims of Friday. Just before hearing the news, I was drawn that morning to listen to Tracey Grammer's classic song "Hey Ho". It always makes me cry, but I sobbed uncontrollably for so long I knew that something must have happened.
Wednesday, July 4, 2012
Monday, May 14, 2012
Mayans looked past 2012
Good to know the world isn't ending this year, according to recently revealed Mayan predictions! See The World Isn’t Ending in 2012, Or So Says the Oldest Mayan Calendar Uncovered by Boston University and other articles that broke the news on last Friday May 11th.
Actually Mayan scholars, not new age hipsters, have always said that the Mayans fully expected the world to keep going. 2012 is just the end of the 13th baktun since their start of creation set to 3114 BC. Say what? Well, Mayans were definitely advanced in astronomy and mathematics as well as spiritual insights. A baktun is 144,000 days, and that's a highly regarded number in many religions including Judaism and Christianity, coming from 12 squared, 12 tribes, 12 months, etc. As for the seemingly arbitrary start of the world in 3114 BC, this creation date might be impressive psychically if not geologically, since it's roughly the beginning of the Bronze Age. After the Stone Age, the Bronze Age signaled a shift that included the first human writings, in ancient Sumer then elsewhere. The collapse of the Bronze Age around 1200 BC was thought by Julian Jaynes to be even more significant for human consciousnessness however, since his famous theory for the breakdown of the bicameral mind says that was when the right brain - which was previously separate and spoke to us as the voice of God - began to become integrated in the modern human being. At any rate, since Mayans are really into counting by twenties, a baktun which is 20 katuns is defintely cause for celebration, but the 13th baktun can't be nearly as exciting as the 20th, which equals one piktun and won't happen until 4772 AD. Sorry, don't hold your breath!
So please do make the most of some new beginning, but don't expect too much to happen in this year alone, because life is definitely expected to continue. And let's face it, millenialism and apocalyptic predictions for the end of the old world and beginning of the new one have been going on for a very long time, and have yet to accomplish everything that was hoped for. Like a thief in the night, Jesus said! Ends of the world seem to happen at times of social unrest when people long for a new motivation and push each other to evolve, which can be a good thing if handled correctly. I know there was a big apocalyptic expectation in the mid 1600's in England during the Interregnum, a period of violent chaos between monarchies. My favorite mystic there Jane Leade was in her mid twenties and was deeply affected. Later in life she would found the Philadelphian society on the work of her mentor John Pordage, and I really like what wikipedia says about them:
"They rejected the idea of being a church, preferring the term society, and none of the members ceased their memberships in existing churches. Together, the group held views that were somewhat similar to Panentheism, regarding the belief in the presence of God in all things, and with a Nondualist component, in that they also believed the presence of the Holy Spirit exists in each and everyone's soul, and that one can become enlightened and illuminated by living a virtuous life and seeking truth through the wisdom of God."
So carry on dear world, and neither lose nor expect to subsist wholly upon your timely ideals!
Wikipedia links for further reading...
Mayan Calendar
Bronze Age
History of Writing
Bronze Age Colapse
Julian Jaynes and the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind
Apocalypticism
Jane Ward Leade and the Philadelphians
Actually Mayan scholars, not new age hipsters, have always said that the Mayans fully expected the world to keep going. 2012 is just the end of the 13th baktun since their start of creation set to 3114 BC. Say what? Well, Mayans were definitely advanced in astronomy and mathematics as well as spiritual insights. A baktun is 144,000 days, and that's a highly regarded number in many religions including Judaism and Christianity, coming from 12 squared, 12 tribes, 12 months, etc. As for the seemingly arbitrary start of the world in 3114 BC, this creation date might be impressive psychically if not geologically, since it's roughly the beginning of the Bronze Age. After the Stone Age, the Bronze Age signaled a shift that included the first human writings, in ancient Sumer then elsewhere. The collapse of the Bronze Age around 1200 BC was thought by Julian Jaynes to be even more significant for human consciousnessness however, since his famous theory for the breakdown of the bicameral mind says that was when the right brain - which was previously separate and spoke to us as the voice of God - began to become integrated in the modern human being. At any rate, since Mayans are really into counting by twenties, a baktun which is 20 katuns is defintely cause for celebration, but the 13th baktun can't be nearly as exciting as the 20th, which equals one piktun and won't happen until 4772 AD. Sorry, don't hold your breath!
So please do make the most of some new beginning, but don't expect too much to happen in this year alone, because life is definitely expected to continue. And let's face it, millenialism and apocalyptic predictions for the end of the old world and beginning of the new one have been going on for a very long time, and have yet to accomplish everything that was hoped for. Like a thief in the night, Jesus said! Ends of the world seem to happen at times of social unrest when people long for a new motivation and push each other to evolve, which can be a good thing if handled correctly. I know there was a big apocalyptic expectation in the mid 1600's in England during the Interregnum, a period of violent chaos between monarchies. My favorite mystic there Jane Leade was in her mid twenties and was deeply affected. Later in life she would found the Philadelphian society on the work of her mentor John Pordage, and I really like what wikipedia says about them:
"They rejected the idea of being a church, preferring the term society, and none of the members ceased their memberships in existing churches. Together, the group held views that were somewhat similar to Panentheism, regarding the belief in the presence of God in all things, and with a Nondualist component, in that they also believed the presence of the Holy Spirit exists in each and everyone's soul, and that one can become enlightened and illuminated by living a virtuous life and seeking truth through the wisdom of God."
So carry on dear world, and neither lose nor expect to subsist wholly upon your timely ideals!
Wikipedia links for further reading...
Mayan Calendar
Bronze Age
History of Writing
Bronze Age Colapse
Julian Jaynes and the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind
Apocalypticism
Jane Ward Leade and the Philadelphians
Tuesday, April 24, 2012
Mr. Soul and the Master Meditation
I was dealing with some rough stuff this morning and this cheered me up: Neil Young is the reincarnation of Cesar Franck! In case you don't know, Neil Young is a legendary Canadian singer-songwriter who is still alive and creative (born November 12, 1945) and Cesar Franck is a late great 19th century French organist (December 10, 1822 to November 8, 1890). My friend Walter Semkiw is a fellow fan of Neil Young and posted this connection recently on his reincarnation research website. I noticed it when I was checking out Walter’s latest case studies and read that Edgar Cayce is not reincarnated as David Wilcock. I made a blog post the day before Easter respecting David’s career as a spiritual teacher and tending to think that he was Cayce, so I’m eating some humble pie there. I trust Walter’s own trusted source Ahtun Re for reincarnation confirmations, and rely on him to correct me when I’m occasionally mistaken.
But Neil and Cesar, yes!! I get it and feel it right away. These are two favorites of mine, spookily intense individualistic musicians not afraid of dissonance, and my God I never noticed how much they look like the same person! It’s hilarious, fantastic, makes me grateful and weepy for how the soul works. Just recently I was drawn to revisit my memories of a Franck concert I enjoyed some years ago, trying to recall what pieces I might have heard. For the next several days I instead found myself remembering, singing, and playing my favorite Neil Young tunes, including Old Man, Sugar Mountain, and Pocahontas. My soul knows, I made the unconscious connection!
I love reincarnation because through it you find your real friends: eternal souls with your own, in love together creating for God. So this morning when I was feeling heavy from life, the words of Mr. Soul sprang to mind and I laughed picturing Neil and Cesar’s shared immortal face. Mr. Soul is Mr. Young's startling soul-searching song about how a female fan letter is confronting the artist with his desires for recognition. Success may alienate him from his true source of self, as fame distorts reality and people want him to be something he’s not. The woman finds him strange but doesn’t want him to change, because he meant something to her that upset her in a way she can cherish. But Neil doesn’t know what part of him affected her so, and anyway of course he’s going to change, everyone does.
(Neil was particularly devoted to change, alienating acoustic fans in later life with electronic phases that I equally enjoyed. Last year the elder Neil was noted for meeting with Steve Jobs just before Steve died, to personally push for a new digital standard that could convey a musician's art, since the ubiquitous mp3 format, so popular for its small compacted files, loses an astonishing 95% of audio information! Steve is incidentally another famous reincarnated innovator I've written about in this blog thanks to Ahtun Re's identification.)
Mr. Soul
(words and music by Neil Young, I'm claiming fair use to display here in the context of lyric analysis)
Oh, hello Mr. Soul, I dropped by to pick up a reason
For the thought that I caught that my head is the event of the season
Why in crowds just a trace of my face could seem so pleasin'
I'll cop out to the change, but a stranger is putting the tease on.
I was down on a frown when the messenger brought me a letter
I was raised by the praise of a fan who said I upset her
Any girl in the world could have easily known me better
She said, You're strange, but don't change, and I let her.
In a while will the smile on my face turn to plaster?
Stick around while the clown who is sick does the trick of disaster
For the race of my head and my face is moving much faster
Is it strange I should change? I don't know, why don't you ask her?
We all do what Neil’s fan does here, we selectively take in views of each other that we need to treasure, not wanting the person to change or be more complex. Neil knows that he can’t hold the image that the woman wants of him, like the tragic harlequin who makes others laugh but cries alone. The artist transforms personal disasters into expressions of great art that others can become inspired within. Strangers can attach their own meanings to make their own transformations without ever having to know the facts of the artist, only to have shared a deeper humanity.
We selectively receive for our needs all the time, and I was doing this today to Neil’s song. Of course I was making the lyrics be about his own reincarnating mister soul, whose manifestly masculine face had so strangely changed from Cesar Franck to Neil Young. The smile of Franck has turned to plaster busts, while Neil’s head raced ahead so much faster. Now I can listen to the recurring themes and increasing dissonance of Rust Never Sleeps, and smile to hear the moods of the great French organist working through his cyclic forms. Is it strange that human beings should change this way? Ask the people who are affected by them.
And now, having received that inspiration and comfort from the soul level, I still need to get on with my day. I still need to move through the chores that weighed upon me before Mr. Soul made me smile. For this trick of disaster I will try to slow down the race in my head, using the following Master Meditation that I got from my guides yesterday.
Here’s the challenge: to become the masters of our own lives, the ones who own our realities and work for ourselves, we must reintegrate all the frightened hurt parts of our soul that we’ve split off into a world of disjoint individuals that can’t cooperate. We all have our strengths and weaknesses, and we’ve tried to use natural specialization as a reason to stay in our strengths and blame someone else for our weakness. Think of an area of your life that you know you’re not handling well. Perhaps you’d like to think that it’s someone else’s job, something you just weren’t meant to do, and maybe you’re right that someone else can do it better. But mastery means owning all of your life, including the parts that you need help with, including the helpers, including the needs, including the tasks. They’re all parts of you!
The master looks directly at what needs to be done, and takes charge to do it themselves or get the right helpers to do it for them. Directions of mistake and failure are sensed and faced quickly so resources can be calmly reassigned. Lessons are learned with compassion and forgiveness for what couldn’t or wouldn't function in roles that were wrong for them; "that’s ok, I’ll get someone else, I’m in charge of this project, let's give you another task." There is no waiting, no wishing, no fear, blame, judgment, or punishment. Success is assured starting now, because this is my life and my goals are self-guaranteed as I grow with them.
Our natural state and divine right is to be the mister master soul who enters the world to accomplish a goal. The dynamism of existence is driven by cycles more powerful than free will, so our free will can only choose or not choose to go where we need to go. This means that if you have a bodily need and it’s time to fulfill it, your master self will be there doing what must be done. If you choose to hold back and hold onto fears or control or whatever you take as a reason to not go into your life, then you will split off. You will become the frightened weaker fragment who loses its connection to God and the source. As a fragment you can live off your energetic savings for a while, your fat of stockpiled resources, your security buffer, and choose to not think about what you’re avoiding until the cycle comes around again to where you are strong. Aha, I feel great again, I didn’t need to go there! You can say this to yourself, but you will feel it is wrong, as an unsustainable lifestyle, world, and weakness in all of humanity grows. It is your reality after all, and anyone in it is sharing the ride for where they are going, so they make it their reality as well. The universe is deeply shared, which is cause for much joy and creating together, not blame and giving away the power of ownership.
You’ll know that something is wrong when life pushes you to do something you’re not good at, not familiar with, weak in, and suddenly you’re terrified rather than curious and excited for something to try. You'll look at something you need to do and feel awful, telling yourself I can’t do that, look at how bad it feels just to think about doing it! If I go there, it’ll take me over, ruin my life, never let me go. Let someone else deal with that, I can’t think about it, I tried, it was a nightmare.
This is what I call the misattribution of emotional source. It’s a form of projection. You look at a place where you belong, where your mastery goes, and you feel how split off from your power you have become. You feel weak and small, and you mistakenly attribute the weakness and smallness to the place or the task, rather than to your avoidance of it. Feelings of consequence that were numb and distant are coming up strong into view, without anything having changed yet. If you actually got into your mastery and did what you need to do, that would be a change and you might feel really great! You don't know, you can't feel from where you are not.
The feelings of helplessness hopelessness are your current state of not yet reuniting with the rest of your soul that masters the place where you need to go. Your master self does what it needs to do on the cycle of life, bringing its energies of joyful living with it when it's time to move on. Cycles help life to grow, to not have to be everywhere and do everything all at once. You'll get to live off each success for a while and be back again before it runs out. Your connection to the source is thus not fragile so long as you keep moving along, God is with you everywhere you need to go.
When you fear a soulless Godless place that you cannot enter or it will destroy you, then that’s a place where you are disconnected from the cycles of God and your own master self. And to be sure, you ought not to go there just looking for trouble, as so many who like to make judgments do. Don't misuse what you're not ready to use, don't condemn what another has found a use for, even if that's not a use good for you. But when the natural rhythms of your destiny says it’s time and you know that you need to get something from there, don’t assume it’s the place that will be the disaster if disaster's what you fear. The disaster would be your current disconnection from another part of your own life and you. Your version of how a place is to be used is waiting to shine. The master in you is calling you home to another piece of your total success in the visible world. Cycles of manifest masculine goal achievement, on a background of continuous feminine support, health, and love, are the way of eternal life. Your body and soul know how much they belong together, do you?
So here is the Master Meditation, very simple and applicable. Whenever you notice your fear and reluctance to deal with a situation, don’t condemn yourself or others and push against wills, first try visualizing this reunification experience even just a little, to the extent that you can afford. Then do a step of what must be done, and don't be surprised if you feel more love, bliss, and safety than you thought possible. Bliss is a sign of doing life right.
1) Picture yourself in the difficult fearful place that you need to deal with. Do not imagine that you are your current scared weakened self, imagine instead what it would feel like to be able to do what needs to be done. Feel the confidence, skill, and support that some people have when faced with this challenge; you know you've seen or imagined people who handle this well, it just wasn’t you. The goal of this step is not to fantasize a way out of yourself, such as being so rich and famous that you don’t really have to do anything except throw money at the problem and tell servants to do it for you. The goal is to start close from where you are now, but somehow magically you’re in the right mood and seeing where to begin, so you can start functioning sustainably and enter the eternal flow. This is your master self, where the rest of your life begins. You become liberated, this was easy, you’re not trapped here forever after all! You can picture yourself reaching a stopping point, feeling satisfied, and getting ready to do something else. You'll be back this way again to pick up where you left off in the cycles of life, it's all going to be okay now. Cycles give you the time and support to do everything that you need and want, so life masters own and enjoy their own cycles immensely.
2) Now, very important, look up from your workplace, your confidence, your progress, your feelings of being so powerful, good, and masterful. See someone weak and defensive approach terrified. This is the old you that couldn’t do the job and they knew it. They weren’t emotionally strong enough to even look where to start, they were overwhelmed, scared, lashing out or withdrawing. Feel your caring for them, how much you wish they could have a better experience of their own life, how much they deserve a chance to start over, to shine, to excel. Call to them, reach out, really care: Oh don’t be scared, I missed you! I know you didn’t get this done because you were so hurt, imbalanced, and disconnected, not because you didn’t try or never wished that you could. Trust yourself, people get through this, I'll show you how. I’ll show you what to do, like anything it's not hard once you know how. You’re smart, brilliant, wonderful, amazing in fact! You were just too alone, and you needed me, and I needed you. You’re so good at so many other things, let’s do this one together, please be with me now.
3) And get up and go to them with your arms open wide. And see them shine with some hope, and cry, and hold them and stroke them like the long lost child of your soul that they are. You know how they feel, because you were them not so long ago! But there's a great difference between being and knowing, because they're still lost in the experience and you're not. So comfort them until their fear is gone and their tears have dried, until like the child again, they get their inquisitive nature and creativity and eagerness to help you back. Children love to be a helper! And if this part of yourself literally becomes a child in your arms, love them for that gift. Give them a simple task and be so proud to have them around. They won’t get in your way this time, because you're the adult who can let them go play their games without you when they think they are done.
You are not the child. Child games are not satisfying without a child to play them with you, and children are not able to do your adult work and goals, and thank goodness for that. As an adult you get to make your own choices and have the life you really want, while children can only play under someone else's rules. Sound familiar? If your previous lifestyle included hiding in your child and feeling like other people run the world and it's all so unfair and hurtful, then this meditation will help you find yourself as the master adult.
Note that as an adult you don't want to just be the parent to the child either, no matter how much that seems like a great way to love yourself. The problem is that the parent consciousness is very limited, it's not sufficient to become a master. This is because the parent must stay close to having been once a child, is a devoted extension of the child, and needs someone to take care of them too. Externally in the world, being a parent is another important task to do well in your cycle if you have children to take care of. But internally and always you need to be the adult. So in meditation you can assign a good parent to watch over your child, but you don't want to step down from your power to just become that parent. Thus here's a big clue in life: if you find yourself worrying and parentalizing and scolding when it comes to your tasks and your roles, you can know that internally you're being your child and reacting as a parent, and you're not being the adult who is able to master with confidence and joy.
Or what if the timid frightened self in your meditation turns not into a child but rather a big awkward defensive insecure teenager? What treasure you've found! Then you get to explain to them a little more about how great life can be when they’re fully grown. Undo whatever damage was done by the parentalizing non-adults you knew who complained that life was so hard. Implicitly or explicitly, those dysfunctional grown-ups of yesterday tried to boss and blame the teen you before you could even really do what they should have done. Their incompetence, their bad example, their lack of true mastery made you want to rebel and use up resources and stay a dependent adolescent forever, able to feel the pleasure of adult activities without the freedom to succeed for yourself or fix any mistakes. No wonder you got so frustrated, felt so trapped and alone!
Adolescents are responsible for exploring possibilities and collecting potentials and frankly profoundly enjoying to do so (that's why they get all the emotions and benefits of puberty!) They aren't supposed to know who they are or what their talents can fully do. But you the adult can, just like your higher self knows you far better than you can imagine. What your higher self doesn't know (as my teacher Lazaris explained to me) is how you want to work with it. This is something you two need to talk about and decide in a loving relationship. So if your teenager shows up as the one who couldn't do your life yet, get the dialogue going, and feel free to show them an adult's full enthusiasm for what mastery brings. They need your living breathing exciting example. Let them share too their own wonder and comprehension from the teen's perspective, in details far beyond the child's mind but for which the teen still doesn't have to be the one who is running the show. So after they've gotten a good lesson with you and taken some ideas for a spin (maybe done some homework), reward them with the keys to your car! Say: I trust you, have a great time with your friends, I know how amazing and special you really are. Your reward is to get to say this and mean it like no one else could when you were young, because you know what it was like to be the teen so bursting with life, and now you have become the master adult who is guided by your own higher self. The impact will be far greater than you can imagine.
Let the child and the adolescent go their own ways in this way, and notice any remaining hurt ashamed frightened adult still standing there at the edge of your mastered task, such as the you that you were just yesterday. Of course adults get to feel these things too, the goal is to not get stuck here because there's so much further better to go! This still-suffering individual then is your peer, they are the lost fragment of you that you took the leap over to make some practical progress and now need to not leave behind. Feel an overflowing compassion, forgiveness, and gratitude to welcome them home. Thank God I found you, thank you so much for making it this far! Or, if you find yourself just too upset and getting sucked into the feelings, then it's really good to be the receiver too. Just switch places for a while and let your own higher self be the master who holds and comforts you. There there, it's going to be alright now, we're back on track, together again. Of course you couldn’t function with all the wounds and complications we're clearing out with this meditation! Things will be so much clearer now, for all parts of you in connection with your own soul and with God.
So starting from whatever degree of self-awareness you need to experience, let your fragment self show their injuries now, note the forms that they take. The two of you get to clean these old hurts together, by their honesty and your light. Feel the mastery of the elements within you, as beautiful healing lights pour forth from your heart and your hands and all around. You have many guides, angels, fellow masters and friends of your soul encompassing the two of you, you can see that fully now. They understand everything you've gone through and they're so proud and happy to help. The old frightened you becomes fully healed and ready to join, so you two can now hug and become one, surrounded by love.
4) Now as a final transition step back to daily life, to your own point in time, you need to go back to your place of mastery and look at the task one more time. Feel bigger and stronger than ever before. Yes, anytime that this task, this need, this area comes up for review, you can take another step now. Picture what you actually need to do next in your life, where to start. What's the next step in time, from a list of tasks broken down, or gathering your tools, or making that list, or assessing the state of things. Nod to yourself in remembering the confidence: of course you can do this. You always could take the next little step, and now you can keep going because you are merged into the master self who has already done from their mastery every step after that.
After all, what people are most afraid in life is not the failure, if they were they wouldn't do it so easily and quickly. What people are afraid of is the success without end, because for that they have to keep up and keep going as everything just grows and grows; will this never stop?! Of course not, if life was meant to go well then you wouldn't want things to come to a halt! Only the master adult is already ahead of every challenge, with their connection to God that brings complete confidence and the endless gratitude for another need to respond. Imagine the joy of the liberated child and excited adolescent when they become the self-realized adult: I get to do this for myself now, I get to decide and make it forever right! Our needs give us treasures, they carry love in our style. What you always most needed was just to connect with your own master self who knows God. You suffered as the lost frightened fragment too long.
Now the meditation is over, so open your eyes. Oh you don't have to feel perfect, but give it a try. See how much easier the next step of what you need to do for your life has become, because you've cleared the road to your future from your past. You've connected more of your eternal continuous joyful living love-self! Do this meditation as often as you like, whenever you doubt that your soul, your master self, or your very own connection to God are waiting for you in that place of action that you need to take - it will help!
There's a world you're living in
No one else has your part
All God's children in the wind
Take it in and blow hard.
- Neil Young from song There's a World
But Neil and Cesar, yes!! I get it and feel it right away. These are two favorites of mine, spookily intense individualistic musicians not afraid of dissonance, and my God I never noticed how much they look like the same person! It’s hilarious, fantastic, makes me grateful and weepy for how the soul works. Just recently I was drawn to revisit my memories of a Franck concert I enjoyed some years ago, trying to recall what pieces I might have heard. For the next several days I instead found myself remembering, singing, and playing my favorite Neil Young tunes, including Old Man, Sugar Mountain, and Pocahontas. My soul knows, I made the unconscious connection!I love reincarnation because through it you find your real friends: eternal souls with your own, in love together creating for God. So this morning when I was feeling heavy from life, the words of Mr. Soul sprang to mind and I laughed picturing Neil and Cesar’s shared immortal face. Mr. Soul is Mr. Young's startling soul-searching song about how a female fan letter is confronting the artist with his desires for recognition. Success may alienate him from his true source of self, as fame distorts reality and people want him to be something he’s not. The woman finds him strange but doesn’t want him to change, because he meant something to her that upset her in a way she can cherish. But Neil doesn’t know what part of him affected her so, and anyway of course he’s going to change, everyone does.
(Neil was particularly devoted to change, alienating acoustic fans in later life with electronic phases that I equally enjoyed. Last year the elder Neil was noted for meeting with Steve Jobs just before Steve died, to personally push for a new digital standard that could convey a musician's art, since the ubiquitous mp3 format, so popular for its small compacted files, loses an astonishing 95% of audio information! Steve is incidentally another famous reincarnated innovator I've written about in this blog thanks to Ahtun Re's identification.)
Mr. Soul
(words and music by Neil Young, I'm claiming fair use to display here in the context of lyric analysis)
Oh, hello Mr. Soul, I dropped by to pick up a reason
For the thought that I caught that my head is the event of the season
Why in crowds just a trace of my face could seem so pleasin'
I'll cop out to the change, but a stranger is putting the tease on.
I was down on a frown when the messenger brought me a letter
I was raised by the praise of a fan who said I upset her
Any girl in the world could have easily known me better
She said, You're strange, but don't change, and I let her.
In a while will the smile on my face turn to plaster?
Stick around while the clown who is sick does the trick of disaster
For the race of my head and my face is moving much faster
Is it strange I should change? I don't know, why don't you ask her?
We all do what Neil’s fan does here, we selectively take in views of each other that we need to treasure, not wanting the person to change or be more complex. Neil knows that he can’t hold the image that the woman wants of him, like the tragic harlequin who makes others laugh but cries alone. The artist transforms personal disasters into expressions of great art that others can become inspired within. Strangers can attach their own meanings to make their own transformations without ever having to know the facts of the artist, only to have shared a deeper humanity.
We selectively receive for our needs all the time, and I was doing this today to Neil’s song. Of course I was making the lyrics be about his own reincarnating mister soul, whose manifestly masculine face had so strangely changed from Cesar Franck to Neil Young. The smile of Franck has turned to plaster busts, while Neil’s head raced ahead so much faster. Now I can listen to the recurring themes and increasing dissonance of Rust Never Sleeps, and smile to hear the moods of the great French organist working through his cyclic forms. Is it strange that human beings should change this way? Ask the people who are affected by them.
And now, having received that inspiration and comfort from the soul level, I still need to get on with my day. I still need to move through the chores that weighed upon me before Mr. Soul made me smile. For this trick of disaster I will try to slow down the race in my head, using the following Master Meditation that I got from my guides yesterday.
Here’s the challenge: to become the masters of our own lives, the ones who own our realities and work for ourselves, we must reintegrate all the frightened hurt parts of our soul that we’ve split off into a world of disjoint individuals that can’t cooperate. We all have our strengths and weaknesses, and we’ve tried to use natural specialization as a reason to stay in our strengths and blame someone else for our weakness. Think of an area of your life that you know you’re not handling well. Perhaps you’d like to think that it’s someone else’s job, something you just weren’t meant to do, and maybe you’re right that someone else can do it better. But mastery means owning all of your life, including the parts that you need help with, including the helpers, including the needs, including the tasks. They’re all parts of you!
The master looks directly at what needs to be done, and takes charge to do it themselves or get the right helpers to do it for them. Directions of mistake and failure are sensed and faced quickly so resources can be calmly reassigned. Lessons are learned with compassion and forgiveness for what couldn’t or wouldn't function in roles that were wrong for them; "that’s ok, I’ll get someone else, I’m in charge of this project, let's give you another task." There is no waiting, no wishing, no fear, blame, judgment, or punishment. Success is assured starting now, because this is my life and my goals are self-guaranteed as I grow with them.
Our natural state and divine right is to be the mister master soul who enters the world to accomplish a goal. The dynamism of existence is driven by cycles more powerful than free will, so our free will can only choose or not choose to go where we need to go. This means that if you have a bodily need and it’s time to fulfill it, your master self will be there doing what must be done. If you choose to hold back and hold onto fears or control or whatever you take as a reason to not go into your life, then you will split off. You will become the frightened weaker fragment who loses its connection to God and the source. As a fragment you can live off your energetic savings for a while, your fat of stockpiled resources, your security buffer, and choose to not think about what you’re avoiding until the cycle comes around again to where you are strong. Aha, I feel great again, I didn’t need to go there! You can say this to yourself, but you will feel it is wrong, as an unsustainable lifestyle, world, and weakness in all of humanity grows. It is your reality after all, and anyone in it is sharing the ride for where they are going, so they make it their reality as well. The universe is deeply shared, which is cause for much joy and creating together, not blame and giving away the power of ownership.
You’ll know that something is wrong when life pushes you to do something you’re not good at, not familiar with, weak in, and suddenly you’re terrified rather than curious and excited for something to try. You'll look at something you need to do and feel awful, telling yourself I can’t do that, look at how bad it feels just to think about doing it! If I go there, it’ll take me over, ruin my life, never let me go. Let someone else deal with that, I can’t think about it, I tried, it was a nightmare.
This is what I call the misattribution of emotional source. It’s a form of projection. You look at a place where you belong, where your mastery goes, and you feel how split off from your power you have become. You feel weak and small, and you mistakenly attribute the weakness and smallness to the place or the task, rather than to your avoidance of it. Feelings of consequence that were numb and distant are coming up strong into view, without anything having changed yet. If you actually got into your mastery and did what you need to do, that would be a change and you might feel really great! You don't know, you can't feel from where you are not.
The feelings of helplessness hopelessness are your current state of not yet reuniting with the rest of your soul that masters the place where you need to go. Your master self does what it needs to do on the cycle of life, bringing its energies of joyful living with it when it's time to move on. Cycles help life to grow, to not have to be everywhere and do everything all at once. You'll get to live off each success for a while and be back again before it runs out. Your connection to the source is thus not fragile so long as you keep moving along, God is with you everywhere you need to go.
When you fear a soulless Godless place that you cannot enter or it will destroy you, then that’s a place where you are disconnected from the cycles of God and your own master self. And to be sure, you ought not to go there just looking for trouble, as so many who like to make judgments do. Don't misuse what you're not ready to use, don't condemn what another has found a use for, even if that's not a use good for you. But when the natural rhythms of your destiny says it’s time and you know that you need to get something from there, don’t assume it’s the place that will be the disaster if disaster's what you fear. The disaster would be your current disconnection from another part of your own life and you. Your version of how a place is to be used is waiting to shine. The master in you is calling you home to another piece of your total success in the visible world. Cycles of manifest masculine goal achievement, on a background of continuous feminine support, health, and love, are the way of eternal life. Your body and soul know how much they belong together, do you?
So here is the Master Meditation, very simple and applicable. Whenever you notice your fear and reluctance to deal with a situation, don’t condemn yourself or others and push against wills, first try visualizing this reunification experience even just a little, to the extent that you can afford. Then do a step of what must be done, and don't be surprised if you feel more love, bliss, and safety than you thought possible. Bliss is a sign of doing life right.
1) Picture yourself in the difficult fearful place that you need to deal with. Do not imagine that you are your current scared weakened self, imagine instead what it would feel like to be able to do what needs to be done. Feel the confidence, skill, and support that some people have when faced with this challenge; you know you've seen or imagined people who handle this well, it just wasn’t you. The goal of this step is not to fantasize a way out of yourself, such as being so rich and famous that you don’t really have to do anything except throw money at the problem and tell servants to do it for you. The goal is to start close from where you are now, but somehow magically you’re in the right mood and seeing where to begin, so you can start functioning sustainably and enter the eternal flow. This is your master self, where the rest of your life begins. You become liberated, this was easy, you’re not trapped here forever after all! You can picture yourself reaching a stopping point, feeling satisfied, and getting ready to do something else. You'll be back this way again to pick up where you left off in the cycles of life, it's all going to be okay now. Cycles give you the time and support to do everything that you need and want, so life masters own and enjoy their own cycles immensely.
2) Now, very important, look up from your workplace, your confidence, your progress, your feelings of being so powerful, good, and masterful. See someone weak and defensive approach terrified. This is the old you that couldn’t do the job and they knew it. They weren’t emotionally strong enough to even look where to start, they were overwhelmed, scared, lashing out or withdrawing. Feel your caring for them, how much you wish they could have a better experience of their own life, how much they deserve a chance to start over, to shine, to excel. Call to them, reach out, really care: Oh don’t be scared, I missed you! I know you didn’t get this done because you were so hurt, imbalanced, and disconnected, not because you didn’t try or never wished that you could. Trust yourself, people get through this, I'll show you how. I’ll show you what to do, like anything it's not hard once you know how. You’re smart, brilliant, wonderful, amazing in fact! You were just too alone, and you needed me, and I needed you. You’re so good at so many other things, let’s do this one together, please be with me now.
3) And get up and go to them with your arms open wide. And see them shine with some hope, and cry, and hold them and stroke them like the long lost child of your soul that they are. You know how they feel, because you were them not so long ago! But there's a great difference between being and knowing, because they're still lost in the experience and you're not. So comfort them until their fear is gone and their tears have dried, until like the child again, they get their inquisitive nature and creativity and eagerness to help you back. Children love to be a helper! And if this part of yourself literally becomes a child in your arms, love them for that gift. Give them a simple task and be so proud to have them around. They won’t get in your way this time, because you're the adult who can let them go play their games without you when they think they are done.
You are not the child. Child games are not satisfying without a child to play them with you, and children are not able to do your adult work and goals, and thank goodness for that. As an adult you get to make your own choices and have the life you really want, while children can only play under someone else's rules. Sound familiar? If your previous lifestyle included hiding in your child and feeling like other people run the world and it's all so unfair and hurtful, then this meditation will help you find yourself as the master adult.
Note that as an adult you don't want to just be the parent to the child either, no matter how much that seems like a great way to love yourself. The problem is that the parent consciousness is very limited, it's not sufficient to become a master. This is because the parent must stay close to having been once a child, is a devoted extension of the child, and needs someone to take care of them too. Externally in the world, being a parent is another important task to do well in your cycle if you have children to take care of. But internally and always you need to be the adult. So in meditation you can assign a good parent to watch over your child, but you don't want to step down from your power to just become that parent. Thus here's a big clue in life: if you find yourself worrying and parentalizing and scolding when it comes to your tasks and your roles, you can know that internally you're being your child and reacting as a parent, and you're not being the adult who is able to master with confidence and joy.
Or what if the timid frightened self in your meditation turns not into a child but rather a big awkward defensive insecure teenager? What treasure you've found! Then you get to explain to them a little more about how great life can be when they’re fully grown. Undo whatever damage was done by the parentalizing non-adults you knew who complained that life was so hard. Implicitly or explicitly, those dysfunctional grown-ups of yesterday tried to boss and blame the teen you before you could even really do what they should have done. Their incompetence, their bad example, their lack of true mastery made you want to rebel and use up resources and stay a dependent adolescent forever, able to feel the pleasure of adult activities without the freedom to succeed for yourself or fix any mistakes. No wonder you got so frustrated, felt so trapped and alone!
Adolescents are responsible for exploring possibilities and collecting potentials and frankly profoundly enjoying to do so (that's why they get all the emotions and benefits of puberty!) They aren't supposed to know who they are or what their talents can fully do. But you the adult can, just like your higher self knows you far better than you can imagine. What your higher self doesn't know (as my teacher Lazaris explained to me) is how you want to work with it. This is something you two need to talk about and decide in a loving relationship. So if your teenager shows up as the one who couldn't do your life yet, get the dialogue going, and feel free to show them an adult's full enthusiasm for what mastery brings. They need your living breathing exciting example. Let them share too their own wonder and comprehension from the teen's perspective, in details far beyond the child's mind but for which the teen still doesn't have to be the one who is running the show. So after they've gotten a good lesson with you and taken some ideas for a spin (maybe done some homework), reward them with the keys to your car! Say: I trust you, have a great time with your friends, I know how amazing and special you really are. Your reward is to get to say this and mean it like no one else could when you were young, because you know what it was like to be the teen so bursting with life, and now you have become the master adult who is guided by your own higher self. The impact will be far greater than you can imagine.
Let the child and the adolescent go their own ways in this way, and notice any remaining hurt ashamed frightened adult still standing there at the edge of your mastered task, such as the you that you were just yesterday. Of course adults get to feel these things too, the goal is to not get stuck here because there's so much further better to go! This still-suffering individual then is your peer, they are the lost fragment of you that you took the leap over to make some practical progress and now need to not leave behind. Feel an overflowing compassion, forgiveness, and gratitude to welcome them home. Thank God I found you, thank you so much for making it this far! Or, if you find yourself just too upset and getting sucked into the feelings, then it's really good to be the receiver too. Just switch places for a while and let your own higher self be the master who holds and comforts you. There there, it's going to be alright now, we're back on track, together again. Of course you couldn’t function with all the wounds and complications we're clearing out with this meditation! Things will be so much clearer now, for all parts of you in connection with your own soul and with God.
So starting from whatever degree of self-awareness you need to experience, let your fragment self show their injuries now, note the forms that they take. The two of you get to clean these old hurts together, by their honesty and your light. Feel the mastery of the elements within you, as beautiful healing lights pour forth from your heart and your hands and all around. You have many guides, angels, fellow masters and friends of your soul encompassing the two of you, you can see that fully now. They understand everything you've gone through and they're so proud and happy to help. The old frightened you becomes fully healed and ready to join, so you two can now hug and become one, surrounded by love.
4) Now as a final transition step back to daily life, to your own point in time, you need to go back to your place of mastery and look at the task one more time. Feel bigger and stronger than ever before. Yes, anytime that this task, this need, this area comes up for review, you can take another step now. Picture what you actually need to do next in your life, where to start. What's the next step in time, from a list of tasks broken down, or gathering your tools, or making that list, or assessing the state of things. Nod to yourself in remembering the confidence: of course you can do this. You always could take the next little step, and now you can keep going because you are merged into the master self who has already done from their mastery every step after that.
After all, what people are most afraid in life is not the failure, if they were they wouldn't do it so easily and quickly. What people are afraid of is the success without end, because for that they have to keep up and keep going as everything just grows and grows; will this never stop?! Of course not, if life was meant to go well then you wouldn't want things to come to a halt! Only the master adult is already ahead of every challenge, with their connection to God that brings complete confidence and the endless gratitude for another need to respond. Imagine the joy of the liberated child and excited adolescent when they become the self-realized adult: I get to do this for myself now, I get to decide and make it forever right! Our needs give us treasures, they carry love in our style. What you always most needed was just to connect with your own master self who knows God. You suffered as the lost frightened fragment too long.
Now the meditation is over, so open your eyes. Oh you don't have to feel perfect, but give it a try. See how much easier the next step of what you need to do for your life has become, because you've cleared the road to your future from your past. You've connected more of your eternal continuous joyful living love-self! Do this meditation as often as you like, whenever you doubt that your soul, your master self, or your very own connection to God are waiting for you in that place of action that you need to take - it will help!
There's a world you're living in
No one else has your part
All God's children in the wind
Take it in and blow hard.
- Neil Young from song There's a World
Sunday, April 8, 2012
Easter well wishes
Happy Easter 2012! May the love of your soul rise with the spring in the blessings of the immortal divine spark in us all.
Last year Easter I posted my vision of Jesus with Mary that changed my life fourteen years ago, yesterday I posted from a more contemporary concern. Life goes on and on after all, and that's the challenge and blessing wrapped in one cosmic shell, to hold to the eternal view. Please enjoy loving your life, I know I aspire to, and this seems to be either easier said than done, or easier done than said, so combining the two is a great goal!
Last year Easter I posted my vision of Jesus with Mary that changed my life fourteen years ago, yesterday I posted from a more contemporary concern. Life goes on and on after all, and that's the challenge and blessing wrapped in one cosmic shell, to hold to the eternal view. Please enjoy loving your life, I know I aspire to, and this seems to be either easier said than done, or easier done than said, so combining the two is a great goal!
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