Cultivating Consciousness – Conscious Community Magazine: Recent Episodes
Cultivating Consciousness – Conscious Community Magazine
By Jakeb Brock
When we are feeling troubled we often lament the fact that no one or nothing seems to be able to help us. We look first to our friends and relatives, but unfortunately they are unable to do much for us. Of course, they can offer us advice and sympathy, but when it comes to actually helping us out of our funk there is only so much they can do. Why is this? Because they simply cannot reach inside of us and understand exactly what we are going through. Everyone has troubles, but no one is able to relate specifically to another’s troubles because we are each uniquely made. And so more often than not we have no choice but to ride out whatever we are feeling on our own.
And there is a reason for this. We are all here to work out and give expression to our karma. And the only way to make progress in this pursuit is to go through what we go through on our own, even if that involves some pretty intense suffering at times. In other words, suffering is the fire that burns away our karmic resistance. But lest we despair of these dynamics, let us take a look at a few aspects of our earthly environment that were put in place precisely for the purpose of encouraging us on our karmic journey. One of these environmental aspects is plant life, and the other is bird life.
This may strike us as strange. For we may wonder: If our fellow humans cannot understand and relate to what we are going through, how can non-human life forms such as plants and birds do so? Wouldn’t their ability to relate be even more limited? But the fact is that these beneficial aspects of our environment can help us, only not so such with understanding (and certainly not with advice) but rather through imparting wisdom, knowledge, and perspective. They can help us by the example of how they live.
When we are troubled one of the first things that happens is that we lose our perspective. We hurt so badly that we feel like the world is about to end. But one thing that both plants and birds teach us is constancy. If they could talk they might say: “Life goes on, my friend. The key is to simply accept whatever life brings our way without struggling or fighting.” Plants and birds are also totally grounded in the present moment. They don’t harp on the past or worry about the future, which we often do when troubled. Their message is: “It’s always today!” So while, these non-human life forms may not be able to relate to our human struggles, they still have much wisdom to teach us.
Plants are stoic and silent. They are not attached to whether they live or die. They live while they live, and they die when it’s time to die. They neither question nor lament this aspect of their being. In fact, some plants live only for a short season. They are born (from seed) in the spring or summer and die with the first frost of autumn. They live their plant life to the full (whether that fullness is flowering or bearing fruit) and then depart in a trail of glory.
Birds, on the other hand, are merry, playful, and exceedingly joyful. Is this because they happen to be in the midst of benign circumstances or feeling especially good? Of course not. Birds are merry and joyful all the time. It is their perpetual way of being. They sing pretty much non-stop, and they sing about nothing. We too sing but we rarely sing for no reason. We may sing because we are feeling good or are trying to express ourselves, or perhaps because we have been encouraged to do so by others who think we are gifted and talented. But clearly singing is not our perpetual way of being. And so, birds can teach us a great deal about true joy. They can also teach us about freedom.
For us human beings, freedom is a concept that we hold dear, but being free is not something that we necessarily are. In fact, much of the time when we are troubled it is because our personal sense of freedom has been violated and impinged upon. For example, we might be feeling that in a certain social situation we do not have the freedom to be fully ourselves. We might feel boxed in by the actions and attitudes of others. And sometimes our freedoms are violated by an outward form of enslavement or oppression, such as being held in a prison or being persecuted on account of our nationality or race. Tragically, these kinds of violations are still extant and even rife in our world. But birds know of no such constraints. They flit and fly from place to place, and neither humans nor any other creature can stop them from acting out this natural impulse. Should some other creature try to harm them or incarcerate them, their instinct of flight kicks in immediately and enables them to escape all danger. And so when we are feeling as though our freedoms are being violated in any way, birds can be a great encouragement to us. They can teach us that not only is freedom possible for us; like a bird, it is our created birthright.
This being said, there is another form of freedom-violation for us human beings that most people are not even aware of. And that form is spiritual in nature.
The fact is that the vast majority of us living on this plane are not free in the spiritual sense. But because the spiritual realm is an unseen realm, most of us have no idea that our spiritual condition is actually a source of bondage for us. This is why we sometimes feel troubled but do not know the reason why. We just have a vague sense that something is not right in our life and we may even have the sense that on some level we are not free, but we do not know enough about spiritual realities to know how this could be. We think that if we are free from all outward forms of enslavement and tyranny we are free indeed, and therefore the impinging of our freedoms cannot the problem. This happens to be the case for most of us who were born into a modern western democratic country like America. Since we are a basically free society, we think that our sense of freedom is automatically guaranteed. Unfortunately, spiritual realities transcend all such outward manifestations. They apply to us regardless of which country we were born into or how much outward liberty we seem to have been given.
What then is the source of our spiritual bondage? Spiritual truth teaches that all of us who were born onto this plane of existence in this age were born because we have unresolved karma to work out. In fact, it is highly likely that we have all been born here multiple times during this age. This is not a choice we make. Rather it is dictated by our karma. Therefore in a very real sense we are all in bondage to our karma. And as long as we continue to work out our karma without resolution we will continue to be assigned to this plane lifetime after lifetime. Only when we have finally resolved our karmic assignment can we be released from its control over us. And only when we are released in this way do we become spiritually free—that is, truly free. In the East this is called being liberated from the karmic wheel. And according to the ancient traditions of their spiritual teachings this liberation is not only possible for us; it represents the ultimate fulfillment of our purpose for being born onto this plane. It brings full and complete deliverance, much like a bird enjoys when it flies off unfettered into the blue sky.
Does this mean that until we attain karmic liberation we must resign ourselves to a lifetime (or lifetimes) of bondage? Since our bondage is emanating from an unseen spiritual source (our karma), does that mean that we are powerless when it comes to freeing ourselves? No, of course not. Our karma is only binding upon us to the degree that we are unwilling to do the spiritual work (sadhana) that satisfies and resolves it. In other words, we canfree ourselves from our bondage to the karmic wheel. We just need to know how to do it. We must learn the Way and then be willing to follow it. And this Way is not hidden or exclusive. Like all other spiritual realities, it is, in fact, universal and based on law.
The problem is that we have been led astray by many false teachings about spiritual life, especially those that have their source in the prominent world religions. These misleading religious teachings have to a large extent seeped into our cultures and therefore become secular and mainstream. They have infiltrated our cultural conditioning and have even become a part of the educational curriculum of the schools our children must attend according to civil (human) law.
So one of the first steps to freeing ourselves spiritually is embracing the possibility that we have been falsely taught about such matters. We must admit to ourselves that we have not only been lied to; we have been brought into captivity to those lies. For example, our cultural conditioning teaches us that if we are free from all outward forms of bondage, freedom need not be an issue for us. Therefore most of us here in the West grow up believing that we are already free—that there is no such thing as spiritual bondage. But what does the old adage say? The first step to getting out of prison is to admit that we are in one. In other words, though our karma constitutes a very real source of spiritual bondage for us, if we do not give credence to such spiritual realities we will not be able to entertain the possibility that we are not free—that we are actually in a prison called the karmic wheel. And if we cannot see that we are in such a prison, we will not be inclined to take the steps to free ourselves.
In the East, however, they not only know about karma; in many cases they prioritize their spiritual practice to learning how to free themselves from this unseen slave master. So the next step for us is the embracing of a spiritual practice that upholds this truth as a priority. And not only must we embrace such a teaching; we also must take on the prescribed disciplines that move us gradually toward liberation.
Does this imply that we here in the West are without a viable path to liberation—that we have no choice but to abandon our own traditions and cross over to an eastern practice if we hope to gain our freedom? Actually, it does not. We can take this road, of course, as many have done. But the fact is that our own western spiritual teachings, when rightly interpreted, also point to these truths. Our religions and secular cultures mislead us, but the actual source of western spiritual teaching, especially that which is found in the Bible, will not mislead us. Rather the truth presented therein has the power to set us free, just like the truth found in some of the ancient eastern teachings.
It is for this reason that many have come to the conclusion that Jesus not only had contact with some of the eastern masters in his younger years; he also learned from them and took to heart the crucial teaching about karma and the inner bondage that it imposes upon us. Thus when he later became a master teacher in his own right, he clearly upheld this important matter of needing to liberate oneself inwardly. That is what he meant when he said: “If you hold to my teaching, you are really my disciples. Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.” (John 8:31,32). Interestingly, the western religionists that heard him speak these words were greatly offended by them. Why? Because they truly believed that freedom was not an issue for them. They believed that they were already free. Thus they had no idea what Jesus was talking about.
But it is also clear that Jesus’ language differed from that of the eastern masters. He never spoke of karma or the karmic wheel. Rather he spoke the language of his own western Judaic tradition. For example, when speaking of the inner bondage that he knew his listeners were subject to, he alluded to the inner condition that his tradition called sin. He said: “Everyone who sins is a slave to sin.” (John 8:34). And: “If you do not believe that I am he [that is, if you do not believe that I am here to teach you the truth], you will indeed die in your sins.” (John 8:24). But Jesus knew very well that sin, the way he spoke of it, and karma were the same thing. Sin was karma in a western guise. And it not only was a source of inner spiritual bondage for us; it also pointed to the need for another round of reincarnation on the karmic wheel, if in this lifetime we died in our sins—that is, failed to resolve our karmic debt.
So what all of this speaks of is that there is such a thing as inner spiritual bondage for all of us still moving in Adamic consciousness, whether we call it sin or karma. And as long as we are subject to this kind of bondage we are not free. And yet, through the teachings of the spiritual masters our situation is far from hopeless. All we have to do is to undertake a truth-infused spiritual practice and hold to it, until we experience the evolution of consciousness, out from the Adam-man and into the Christ-man. Only then will we be free indeed. Only then will we be able to soar in the heavens like a bird. Is this possible for us? Of course, it is. Have there been those practitioners that have actually become as free as a bird? Yes, there have, in fact, been many. Just listen to the words of the biblical Psalmist: “We have escaped like a bird from the fowler’s snare; the snare has been broken; and we have escaped.” (Psalm 124:7). And what is the snare? It is our own inner condition of unresolved karma or sin.
Jakeb Brock is a spiritual teacher and the author of The New Consciousness: What Our World Needs Most. Visit www.ournewconsciousness.com or www.facebook.com/thenewconsciousness.
By Jakeb Brock
All human beings have at times felt a sense of separation or separateness—a sense that in its acute form can lead to confusion and depression. In fact, for many it is for this very reason that they fear being alone. They shun solitude and seek rather to constantly surround themselves with other people. Unfortunately, this does not remove the sense of separation from their psyche. It only distracts them from having to feel it without support or understanding. They try to escape it, but the sense of separation is always there.
So what is the reason for this human dilemma? Why is it like this for us? Where does our sense of separation come from, and why is it so difficult for us to banish it from our psyche for good? Psychologists have weighed in on this matter by claiming that the sense of separation is simply a part of the overall human condition. Therefore it is not to be feared or dreaded in its normal, mild form. And if it occasionally leads to an acute bout of insecurity it can perhaps be treated with anti-depression drugs. But none of this addresses the real issue of why human beings feel separate. So let us turn away from modern cultural views and treatments for a moment and seek to find out what the spiritual masters have taught about this phenomenon.
In contrast to our psychologists the spiritual masters have with one accord taught that the sense of separation that we human beings feel is a spiritual condition. It is neither psychological nor philosophical. Moreover, though it is certainly a common condition in today’s world, it is not a condition that is simply part of being human. Rather it is an aberration that we do not need to accept and learn to live with. In fact, we
can get rid of it once and for all. But before this can happen we must learn the truth about what is causing this condition, where it comes from, and how to approach bringing about the solution. In other words, since our sense of separation actually has a spiritual source and basis, it is foolishness to think that mere psychological overtures will eradicate it, however well-meaning they may be. No, there is only one efficacious method for dealing with a spiritual dilemma, and that is by applying a spiritual solution.
The Bible is a comprehensive truth teaching about the human condition. It addresses pretty much every aspect of our human hood, and our sense of separation is no exception to this rule. In fact, our sense of separation is one of the first aberrations in the human condition that the Bible tackles. And interestingly, what we read in the Bible’s opening pages is that things have not always been like this for us. We think we know what it means to be a human being, mostly because the human experience has not changed much since we began keeping historical records. So not only do our experts (scientists, psychologists, philosophers, etc.) make their deductions based on this consistent portrait of human hood, most people have developed an instinctual sense about who we are and what makes us tick. And history teaches us that since we have been basically like we are now for so long it is logical to deduce that this is just how we are. But this is not the teaching of the Bible.
Interestingly, though our experts have concluded that the Bible’s creation account is unscientific (mostly because the Bible seems to claim that the human experiment is only six thousand years old and our scientists know with certainty that it is much much older than that), the Bible’s teaching about the origins of man, when interpreted correctly, does not conflict with the scientific view. How can this be so? Because what the Bible
actually teaches is that a man named Adam (which happens to be the Hebrew word for man) underwent a dramatic transformation in the Garden of Eden, and it was only after that transformation that the human experience began to resemble that which we now call the way things are. In other words, the species called Homo sapiens or man existed prior to Adam’s Garden transformation, but it bore little resemblance to the creature we became afterwards.
So the question then becomes: What was that transformation in the Garden all about? What really happened to us (in Adam)? Fundamentalist Christians believe that we became sinners at that time and leave it at that. But the spiritual masters have taught that something much more profound happened to our race—that we became spiritually conscious beings. And since we were clearly created with this evolutionary potential, it must follow that we, in Adam, awoke to our created endowment of consciousness. The Bible then goes on to describe this awakening—that it was very great, making us into a creature reflective of the image of God. It also describes the effects upon the human experience that it instigated. Then it goes on to teach that the state of consciousness that we awoke to in the Garden of Eden was not the end of the line for us—that we are actually creatures with the capacity for further consciousness evolution and expansion. That is the entire reason that the Bible closes with the advent of Jesus the Christ. For not only was he an example of the kind of man we have the potential to be; he also showed us the Way to unlock our evolutionary impulse and become like him. This he did because he perceived that we had somehow gotten stuck in the Adam state and were having great difficulty becoming all that we had the potential to be. In Adam we had awoken to our endowment of consciousness, and that was good. But then instead of going forward and becoming the race of Christs (like Jesus) that we were created to be, we dug in our heels and pretended that Adam was the end of the line for us.
Be all this as it may, there are other teachings to be gleaned from the Garden of Eden story. And one of those teachings is that the species called man was not newly created at that time; he was only transformed. He did not come into being. Rather he awoke to his created endowment of spiritual consciousness. This means that our species could, in truth, be as old as the scientists speculate. Before Adam we were the same species, only without spiritual consciousness. So what were we like, and how did our experience differ in that prehistoric time? In all likelihood we were instinctual biological creatures, much like all the unconscious creatures that presently inhabit the earth—that is, all other creatures besides man. We roamed the earth, lived from hand to mouth, mated and reproduced, etc. But we were nothing like we are now, and the human experience was nothing like it is now.
This transformation that happened to Adam was so profound that we essentially became different creatures. True, our biological makeup remained in tact. But we bore little resemblance to our prehistoric ancestors otherwise. And because we were nothing like we were prior to Adam, it made perfect sense that the human experience would also be unrecognizable. So we are the same species, but it definitely must be delineated that post-Adam man is nothing like pre-Adam man. They are both Homo sapiens, but we went on to become Adamites.
So let us return to the biblical account of the Garden of Eden. Why? Because not only can we read therein about the transformation of the human race that took place at that time; we also can learn some of the defining nuances of Adamic consciousness and what now makes us Adamites tick. Perhaps not every detailed nuance is described therein, but there is enough written to get a good idea of how our lives got to be the way that they are now. In other words, it is from the Bible’s Eden account that we can come to understand the origins of some of the nuances that now define us—nuances that have a direct connection to the state of consciousness we awoke to and have been moving in for the past six thousand years, the state that I call Adamic.
The first and most obvious nuance of post-transformation man is that he is (we are) now a conscious being, made in the image of God. This may seem redundant to us at this point, but when compared with the pre-transformation man it is both powerful and highly defining. In Adam we all awoke to our endowment of spiritual consciousness. So even though some of us may live as though we are still unconscious, the truth is that there is now not one member of the human family that got left behind in this regard. We have become a race of conscious beings, and not only that: the consciousness within us has the same tendencies and characteristics. In other words, though we are diverse in our physical appearance and mental functions, we are all the same in the arena of consciousness. And this means that we have all become evolutionary creatures because that is the nature of consciousness. This evolutionary function may have stalled in the vast majority of us, but it is still active when released from its self-imposed restraints.
Another nuance that we tend to take for granted is that in our present state of consciousness we are like Adam; we are Adamites. We act like Adam, think like Adam, emote like Adam, etc. This implies that we do not act, think, and emote like the Christ or like God. Our endowment of consciousness makes us like God, but in practical terms the full realization of that likeness is still only in the realm of potentiality. Right now we
bear little resemblance to God or the Christ. Instead we are pretty much carbon copies of Adam. So according to the Bible, who is this Adam and what is he like?
The first thing we read is that Adam and Eve realized that they were naked. To realize something is not merely a mental process; it is an act of consciousness. So it might be said that this was their first real act of consciousness after their awakening or transformation. Then they sowed some fig leaves together and made coverings for themselves. By this we can deduce that they now felt ashamed of their nakedness. This too was a stark departure from how they used to be. For while they most likely felt things before their transformation, this sophisticated brand of emoting was clearly also an act of consciousness. It was not just spontaneous raw emotion; it was calculated and controlled. And it led to decisive action. It led to a self-reliant solution. Not only was this an attribute of consciousness; as it turned out it was a defining attribute of the Adamic state of consciousness—a state of consciousness in which we perceive ourselves as separate and alone and must therefore fend for ourselves in each and every task that confronts us. Yes, this simple act of making coverings for themselves to hide their nakedness was the first display of the orientation of human strength that we are all now so familiar with. It was also the first outcropping of the sense of separation.
But lest we should doubt this, let us read what happens next (Genesis 3:7,8). Suddenly Adam and Eve heard the sound of the Lord God as He was walking in the Garden in the cool of the day. And what did they do? They hid from the Lord among the trees of the Garden. This was not only a major departure from how they had acted in the past; it was also a clear-cut portrayal of what was to come for our species. They had never been inclined to hide from God before. But now they wanted nothing to do with
Him. They wanted Him to leave them alone. What had happened to them? A powerful sense of separation had come over them. It was most evident in the way they now viewed God, but it would also come to affect their interactions with one another, their fellowman, and even the rest of creation. Needless to say, this was not just a mental or physical reaction on their parts; it too was an act of consciousness. They had become conscious beings, and the state of their consciousness included a never-ending, relentless sense of separation.
Therefore the sense of separation that we all feel at times is not merely psychological or philosophical; it is a defining attribute of Adamic consciousness—that is, the state of consciousness that we are all moving in and have virtually become stuck in. Adam did not make it up and then pass it down to his descendants by teaching them about it. Rather what he passed down to us was his state of consciousness—a state of consciousness that had become embedded in his genetic makeup and just happened to include an inbred sense of separation that simply won’t quit.
So it is that our sense of separation cannot be psychologically manipulated or medicinally treated. Why not? Because it is an attribute of our state of consciousness, and as such it can only be eradicated through spiritual means. What sort of spiritual means? Doing what it takes to release the evolutionary processes of consciousness within us. In other words, there is only one way to get rid of the sense of separation once and for all, and that way is to stop being Adam. It is to take the evolutionary leap of consciousness from the Adam man to the Christ man.
Jakeb Brock is a spiritual teacher and the author of The New Consciousness: What Our World Needs Most. Visit www.ournewconsciousness.com or www.facebook.com/thenewconsciousness.
By Karen Corinne Herceg
Many of us will recall the old saying, “Sticks and stones can break my bones, but words will never hurt me.” Well, it’s blatantly wrong. As a survivor of sexual, physical, emotional, and psychological abuse, I can attest that the deepest cuts are the ones that sear the mind and emotions, words that do not align with actions, and the betrayal of promises. This is not to discount any repercussions from physical and sexual abuse. But it’s the emotional impact of words from others—especially those closest to us—that tear at the soul and spirit. They form feelings deep within us that impact every aspect of our lives and relationships. It can take decades of active healing work to recover a sense of authentic self and genuine validation from truth and to shed the skewed perspectives or opinions of others. Opinions are basically lies not based in objective truth. They’re tainted by the agendas we have infused with information instilled in us since birth from a myriad of sources—all with their own agendas of course. Then we become part of the problem that requires recovery. This is a process of remembering our true worth in the eyes of the Universe/Creator–however you wish to define it–that has been aberrated by others’ struggles, wounds, and journeys that have impacted our own. It is a journey back home to an energy that loves unconditionally. We recover our worth and value by releasing our self-prescribed notions that are mere mirror reflections and not transparent gateways to universal truths. In essence, it is the road back to Truth–that innate knowing we can all access but most often ignore because of what we’ve suffered in the world that obscures what our intuition always lets us know is the right path.
We live in a world where the illusion of separateness reigns. We’re meant to break through that illusion despite the many physical manifestations it represents to us. Do we take at face value what we see in front of us? Do we use genuine critical thinking about everything we see and hear? Or do we just spew out learned and rehearsed rhetoric we’ve absorbed as our own. Are we sensitive to how we communicate to others? Or do we interact from a myopic viewpoint we treat as sacrosanct? Do we cultivate awareness and allow an objective perspective to evaluate our belief systems and habitual responses? For this we need to leave our comfort zones of needing to be right.
Everyone has a responsibility to use words with care and compassion. This certainly applies to writers who often put words out to a larger audience—and one whose members are unseen and unknown. Emotions through words expressed in a healthy way are acceptable; rage and revenge are not. It also does not mean we compromise ourselves to fit others’ expectations out of fear or anger. Rather we can be aware and kind in expressing that Truth, not confrontational or opinionated. Truth is not opinion that is overshadowed by preconceived notions and attitudes programmed into us from birth and many other lifetimes. We can act from a place of Truth without arrogance and righteousness. How others respond is their responsibility, but first we are accountable to ourselves. No one has a monopoly on Truth, but we do have access to it. We can fool ourselves in wanting to be right, but we can always feel genuine Truth whether we want to acknowledge it or not instead of allowing our feelings to override it. Feelings are real to us but are subjective and most often not reality based. Truth does not waver. Our perceptions waver and deserve a continuous deep dive, not rote acceptance. This is the meaning of critical thinking—not to reinforce what we want to believe but to question what we do believe. Is what we see in others a true manifestation of their spirit? Do we gauge their worth by our misguided perceptions, societal norms, fears, and a desire to be right or better than someone else? How do we address the “others?” Is there inherent respect? Humility? An open heart?
I am not advocating overlooking transgressions. We need healthy boundaries as we interact with souls who are in various stages of evolution and intention. But if we listen to our intuition, it will guide us. We overlook warnings and signals when we hold on to beliefs and agendas. And sometimes we just need to leave certain people, not with anger and retribution, but as a necessary step in our own journey.
Recently, I received an email from a reader who visited my website. I’m a writer and native New Yorker who moved to France five years ago. Lyria Drake lives in Latin America. It thrills me that someone so far away can find me and connect with me, although it doesn’t surprise me. I don’t believe in coincidences, only guidance. This reader was kind enough to tell me they appreciated my work and shared an article about sensitivity and awareness in writing. While I always endeavor to be guided by the Universe and Truth, we can be mindful that others are on different parts of the life continuum. In this spirit, we can be sensitive to how we speak and write no matter what the subject. I share the article here as a practical guide not only for writers but as a reminder to all of us when we communicate with others. My thanks to Lyria for sharing it with me and to Melissa Haun for writing the article. I hope you find it insightful and helpful.
https://www.websiteplanet.com/blog/sensitive-writing-guide/
Karen Corinne Herceg graduated Columbia University with a B.A. in Literature & Writing. Her second book, Out From Calaboose: New Poems, was released in November 2017. She publishes poetry, prose, essays, interviews, and reviews internationally and is currently working on a memoir. She has interviewed actor Alan Alda for the cover of Writer’s Digest and novelist Gail Godwin for The Southern Literary Review. Her review of Richard Martin’s latest poetry book Leakage & Smokewill appear soon in American Book Review.
By Glynis Amy Allen & Graham Adrian
“Wait a little,” said Frank Iriam to his mate. “Let’s sit on that old log for a few minutes and have a smoke.”
After the war, he wrote about what happened next. ‘When we were a hundred and fifty yards from the cover of some trees, I’d had a feeling of impending evil. I felt a premonition something was about to happen.’ Sure enough, a moment later a five point nine inch shell came over, hitting directly on their path. Had they carried on walking they would have been killed.
Back in London, England, towards the end of WWII the city was under attack from V1 and V2 rockets. Mr J O’Carroll was returning home on a Tube train when, out of nowhere, he had a sudden vivid mental vision. He saw himself standing in King’s Cross station, his destination, and heard a terrific explosion. This had such an impact on him that when he arrived at King’s Cross he waited for several minutes by the bookstall.
‘If there’s anything in it,’ he said to himself, ‘it should happen now.’ It did. A rocket fell on the Presbyterian Church in Regents Square and blew Mr O’Carroll’s flat to bits.
Even a certain Lance Corporal Adolf Hitler seemed to lead a charmed life, emerging unscathed from several battles during WWI. Later, he wrote about an occasion when his life had been ‘miraculously saved’.
‘I was eating my dinner in a trench with several comrades. Suddenly a voice seemed to be saying to me, “Get up and go over there.” It was so clear and insistent that I obeyed mechanically, as if it had been a military order. I rose at once to my feet and walked twenty yards along the trench, carrying my dinner in its tin can with me.
‘Then I sat down to go on eating, my mind being once more at rest. Hardly had I done so when a flash and a deafening report came from the part of the trench I had just left. A stray shell had burst over the group in which I had been sitting.’ Sadly, of course, millions of soldiers were not so fortunate and many of them had premonitions of their own deaths. ‘We have to look death in the face,’ wrote Canadian soldier, Angus Martin.
An English newspaper published a letter from a lady who said that her neighbour, a reservist, had been called up in 1914. Privately, he had given her his wedding ring and said that he knew he wouldn’t be coming home. She was to give it to his wife when she got the telegram saying that he was missing.
For months he wrote letters home regularly. Then one day, his ten year-old son came crying into the lady’s house and said, “I saw my father’s ghost at the end of my bed. He spoke to me but he had a wound in his chest and he said, ‘I am not coming home, son.’”
The neighbour took the wedding ring to the man’s wife and told her what the boy had said. She replied that she already ‘knew somehow’…
As well as the many such accounts by soldiers, there are thousands of similar stories told by everyday folk of receiving important information without having any idea where it comes from.
Alice was driving steadily along a deserted highway at night and approaching green signals at an intersection. “Something told me to slow right down. There didn’t seem to be any reason for it. But moments after I reached the junction a speeding car ran the red light to the right. It would have hit me if I hadn’t stopped.”
Bill worked the production line of a steelworks. “I had a sudden feeling that something wasn’t right and backed off.” Moments later, a section of pipe slipped and molten hot iron at 1500 degrees poured out where he’d been standing.
From life-saving instincts to simple premonitions – a friend’s name comes to mind and a few minutes later they phone us, or in conversation with a stranger we know exactly what they’re about to say – it is surely perfectly clear that our minds have senses far beyond the physical. There are moments when nearly all of us have slipped into an alternative state of consciousness where time and distance seem to be irrelevant.
The mind has extraordinary powers. Telepathy has been demonstrated with odds of billions to one against chance, even when the subjects were shielded from electromagnetic energy in Faraday cages or separated by thousands of miles. The US and Soviet governments have actively, and successfully, engaged in remote viewing. Such experiences are usually denied by science or by those in high office simply because, of course, we have no idea how they can happen, we don’t yet understand the energies involved.
But with so much evidence, should we not take the unconscious mind more seriously? The English psychic Chris Robinson has been in regular contact with the police and intelligence agencies due to having precognitive dreams about several IRA bomb attacks in London in the 1990s. In 2001 he had two extraordinarily accurate dreams about the World Trade Centre attacks. In one of them, a plane was hijacked and flown into a large building in New York City, whilst the other showed a plane crashing into two tall New York tower blocks. Chris sent detailed notes and drawings to the US embassy in London but was not heeded.
The examples described so far have all occurred spontaneously, yet perhaps there are ways of deliberately downloading information from ‘the higher mind’. The ancient Chinese certainly thought so and developed the oracle I Ching, or Book of Changes, some three thousand years ago, to interpret the subtle energies in our lives and predict how they’re likely to turn out. It’s surprisingly easy to use. A random act such as tossing coins suggests a particular chapter in the book and some specific paragraphs.
The British author Nigel Peace tells of his first experience with the book. He was applying for a new job, a promotion, and wanted to know if the prospects were good. The interview had gone well and everything seemed promising. But the reading was shocking, clearly referring to ‘misfortune’, ‘a danger of injury’, and a need for ‘great determination’. Not very encouraging!
Well, he wasn’t sure he could trust a book’s advice, and really needed the extra money, so he took the job anyway – and entered a two-year nightmare. His car was vandalised, he was personally assaulted and he struggled to keep on top of the job with no support from management. None of these things could have been known in advance by any normal means. Nigel writes that he soon learned to respect the book…
Many accounts of paranormal knowledge are dismissed simply because those involved have no ‘status’. How do we know they can be trusted? Well, in fact there have been many in high office and of undoubted reputation, from President Abraham Lincoln to Prime Minister Sir Winston Churchill, who have spoken publicly about consulting psychics or having personal precognitive experiences.
Sir Oliver Lodge (1851-1940) was a scientist who made his name by discoveries and inventions in electrolysis and electromagnetism, including the first moving coil loudspeaker and the first Morse Code transmission. He also carried out extensive investigations of radiation. He lost his son in the First World War; Second Lieutenant Raymond Lodge, twenty-six years-old, had been fighting with the Second South Lancashire Regiment.
Lodge was persuaded by his friend Sir Arthur Conan Doyle to sit with the well-known trance mediums Alfred Vout Peters and Gladys Osborne Leonard, and he documented these meetings in detail, publishing his account in 1916.
Raymond did indeed communicate through each medium separately and at different times. For example, he gave a detailed description of a regimental photograph in which he appeared shortly before his death. The Lodges were not aware of this photograph, but two months later the mother of one of Raymond’s fellow officers sent them a copy of it. It was exactly as Raymond had described it. Another time, when Sir Oliver was testing the medium, Raymond referred to one of his brothers by a nickname known only among the siblings.
Sir Oliver, an eminent scientist and physicalist, was deeply impressed by the accuracy of these communications and became convinced that Raymond’s surviving spirit was in genuine contact.
Some three decades later, Air Chief Marshall Hugh Dowding was invited to a sitting with the renowned direct voice medium Estelle Roberts. Dowding had been Commander-in-Chief of RAF Fighter Command, overseeing the Battle of Britain that defeated the Nazi invasion of England in 1940. Nicknamed Stuffy because of his mannerisms, he did not make friends easily, yet he was known for his humility and sincerity. He was a no-nonsense, clear-thinking military man and a committed Christian, but had been very saddened by the loss of so many young pilots.
During this meeting, some eight fallen servicemen, both pilots and sailors, communicated. They provided clear evidence of their identities and of the fact that they were perfectly aware of events on Earth. Several of them also spoke directly to Dowding with great respect, thanking him for his caring leadership. This and other similar experiences affected him deeply to the point that he pursued an interest in Spiritualism and later became involved in the Theosophical Society. He wrote of his belief in an afterlife and in reincarnation, and soon afterwards became a vegetarian and an anti-vivisectionist.
Such total changes of belief and lifestyle by men of the highest reputation and undoubted integrity speaks volumes about the powerful impact of their spiritual experiences. There will always be those, of course, who doubt the real origin of spirit communication and there are alternative theories, such as C G Jung’s ‘collective unconscious’.
Yet the sheer detail of all the accounts given here
surely suggests one thing beyond doubt:
that every one of us has an extraordinary mind
that can reach far into alternative worlds of consciousness.
Our new book, Ghosts of War, has well over two hundred such spiritual stories told by honest men and women from America, Britain, across the world and throughout history. It is written as a tribute to the many who have given their lives so that we may be free.
Glynis Amy Allen & Graham Adrian are co-authors of the new book Ghosts of War, with more than 200 true accounts of communication with the spirits of those who have fallen in battle, published worldwide by Local Legend.
https://local-legend.co.uk
By Jakeb Brock
Human beings have always been fascinated by and obsessed with power. In fact, if one accepts the Bible as being historically valid, it might be deduced that this age of man began with a power grab when our primal ancestor fell prey to the temptation of eating from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and his eldest son then proceeded to murder his brother in a field. And when viewed this way it makes sense that the rest of the age has been largely defined by the human obsession with power.
But even if one does not subscribe to the historical validity of the Bible, it cannot be denied that men and power have been bed partners since as long as we can remember. So let us take a closer look at this phenomenon.
First of all, let us ask ourselves what the Bible might be trying to teach us by putting forth the allegory of a tree and its fruit being able to alter the entire chemistry of the human race. Literally speaking, Adam took one bite of the fruit and was forever changed inwardly after that. But allegorically it is obvious that there was more going on than that. Allegorically, the temptation of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil was the temptation of power.
The next question is: How? In what way did this act of biting into a piece of fruit speak of the temptation of power? The answer is that for human beings the knowledge of good and evil is actually synonymous with mental power. It is not only the power to differentiate between good and evil; it is the power to rule, to dominate, and to control. And because these instincts tend to have a corrupting influence upon the human psyche, its outworking has most often been cruel and tyrannical.
And so when we think of power this is what we usually have in mind. We think of human beings that are mentally so strong and cruel that they have no qualms about lording over masses of people and imposing upon them all manner of restrictions and controlling energies. They even resort to brands of bodily torture that maim and kill. That is the true nature of war. It is simply the result of one or more individuals carrying out their agenda for accruing more power.
The societies of men are therefore largely characterized by this impulse to possess and get more power. And not only are rulers and dictators moving in this dynamic; virtually all the citizens are too. Even the weakest of men have adopted this orientation, so that it often plays out in personal relationships such as husband and wife, parents and children, friend to friend, etc. Power, control, manipulation, dominance—these have come to characterize most relationships, albeit sometimes subtly. And it is this power-lust dynamic that has turned our society into a Darwinian, dog-eat-dog arena.
Based on this assessment of the world of men, it would seem then that there is only one kind of power at work in our universe. But fortunately, this is not the case. There is another power at work, and this power not only permeates the universe; it also happens to live inside of men. It is the power of love. I know it sounds like an old worn out cliché. But again, let us look more closely at how the power of love works.
In religious circles it is often taught that God is love. And that is true. But again we must ask: How? How is God love? And the best way to answer this is to ask another question: What is God? Amazingly, not many people can adequately answer this question, despite the billions that practice some form of religious devotion. Most people have a rather vague idea of who or what God is. And when it comes to the equation: God is love, again this is usually accepted without much in-depth understanding. But when we gain the revelation that God is consciousness, things begin to come into better focus.
If God is consciousness and God is love, it is really consciousness then that is love, not some vague image of an old man with a long white beard smiling down on us from heaven. Consciousness is the perfection of being. It is divine, deathless, immune to disease, overflowing with abundance, limitless in potential, and it is love. Furthermore, love is power. In fact, love is the greatest power in our universe.
The power of consciousness is the power of love, and this power is at work in men. How can this be? Because the rightful identity of man is actually divine spiritual consciousness. True, we have minds and bodies, but these are merely biological created aspects of our being. As such, they are temporal and far inferior to consciousness, which is eternal and indestructible. But by falling prey to the temptation of power in Adam we have, perhaps inadvertently, come to elevate our biological function of mind above our endowment of spiritual consciousness. In fact, we have become so mind oriented that we no longer see consciousness as a power at all. That means that we also tend to scoff at the notion that love is a power.
The Bible says that God created man in His own image. This is very important to remember. For, if God is consciousness and He created us in His image, then we are consciousness too. And if the divine consciousness is love, then so also is human consciousness. And if the love inherent in divine consciousness is power, then so is the love inherent in human consciousness.
Why then do we not recognize this love as a power? Why do we view mental power as the greatest power in the universe? It is because the power of love is not like mental power. In fact, it is nothing like mental power. It is neither forceful nor clever. It is not manipulative or controlling. And never is it cruel or overbearing. Mental power is highly demonstrative, while love is quiet and unassuming. And so, we mistake mental power’s showy demonstration for true power.
If the power of love is not forceful or demonstrative, how then can it be said to be a power? The answer is that love is an attribute of consciousness. and consciousness is the perfection of being. It is eternal and divine. Therefore it endures forever. That is its power. Mental power is a product of mind, and mind is a biological function, nothing more. It passes away in time. Therefore it is mental power that is not a true power. Consciousness is Spirit. It is the power of an indestructible life—the power of the resurrection of the Christ. And so it also holds true that God is a higher power than man because God is pure consciousness-Spirit while man is partly biological in his makeup.
Returning to the Garden of Eden, we see the man created in the image of God with an endowment of divine spiritual consciousness within him falling prey to the temptation of mental power. On the one hand, this makes sense. For, Adam is not like God, in that he has a biological makeup. And it is this biological makeup that deceives him. He is beguiled by the idea that with and through his biological mind he can wield a greater, more demonstrative form of power than the quiet unobtrusive power of love. But what he did not foresee was that by making the biological function of mind into an instrument of power, he was also elevating it above his created endowment of spiritual consciousness. This subsequently led to a false identification with his mind. And the moment this happened, death entered into the picture for our species. How? Through Adam identifying with a strictly biological aspect of his being. And so, the temptation of mental power led to man becoming a dominantly biological creature. And all biological life forms are subject to dissolution and death.
So it was that this entire age of human endeavor on the earthly plane became bound up with one man’s decision to elevate his biological function of mind above his endowment of spiritual consciousness—a wrongful order in the psyche of man that results in many forms of dysfunction and disease. Through falling prey to the temptation of mental power Adam came to identify with his biological function of mind, which, in turn, led to him becoming disconnected from God and alienated from his own spiritual consciousness. He also became mortal. Indeed, this turned out to be a Pandora’s box with an almost endless list of curses upon the human race. For, the fear of death then became the mother of all lesser fears, while the instinct for self-preservation came to dominate human consciousness to such a degree that laying hold of true spiritual life has become nearly impossible for us.
Though those who are moving in the human strength of Adam and Cain often downplay their sense of disconnect from God and consciousness, this outworking has been far more harmful to our species than we tend to believe. We think that making things right is just a matter of deciding to return to God by taking up a spiritual practice. But really it is much more problematic than that. What we fail to take into account is the conditioned psychological imprint that forms in us after years and years of hardening our hearts and pursuing the path of mental power. Thus even if we make the sincere decision to return to God, we find this imprint of wrongful psychic order and identity continuing to hold sway in our psyche, as if on auto-pilot, thereby demanding that we go in and do the difficult work of erasing it and rooting out its influence permanently. This work can take literally years of dedicated sadhana.
The moment Adam said yes to the temptation of mental power, the definition of what it means to be a human being was altered beyond recognition. We went from being creatures created in the image of God to being creatures with virtually no connection to God. We went from being creatures of light to being creatures of darkness—from moving in the harmony of spiritual communion to the discord of emotionally charged biological instincts. We traded the pure benign power of consciousness and love for the cruel and destructive power of mind. We went from a life orientation based on rest and trust to one of anxious self-reliance. We went from being spiritual creatures to being mental creatures. And when all these changes kicked in, we became enslaved to them through the forming of an indelible subconscious imprint. Thus we became enslaved to our own biological workings.
But the good news is that the power of consciousness-love is greater than the power of mind. And that power lies in its indestructible, eternal quality. So, whereas the cruel power of mind may seem like it has no rival, the fact is that its rival, love, is always present, waiting in the wings. Though the cruel power of mind may very well dominate our psyche for an entire lifetime, the day invariably comes when it loses steam and begins to diminish and relinquish its hold upon us. How does this come to pass? It happens naturally as our biological makeup gives way to the dictates of time and begins to decay and move toward the grave. That is the trump card of true love. It need not be forceful or proactive. It only needs to be patient and kind—to wait and watch as mind’s power wanes and is laid low in the grave. Human biological death is therefore the genius of God in action. For, not only do we human beings have the power of love at work in us, waiting in the wings; we also are indestructible and eternal beings. Though our biological makeup will always be subject to death and dissolution, our endowment of spiritual consciousness lives forever.
So lifetimes may come and lifetimes may go, in which we live as mortal mental creatures. But eventually our karma plays itself out, to where we begin to see that the human mind is not the God-ordained ruler of our psyche. It is only a biological aspect of our being, and as such, is both mortal and easily corrupted. Thus mental power may rule for a lifetime, but when it succumbs to the grave it is a power no more.
Meanwhile, our consciousness endures forever. It reappears even as we are born into new incarnations, and this cycle may repeat itself for a long time. But eventually, consciousness rises up and receives the truth, and when that happens we are set free from the delusion of Adam—the delusion that made us believe that mental power was desirable. Then comes the day when we actually rebuke and renounce our blind ancestral allegiance to Adam—when we reject the entire wrongful order of the biological Adamic mind elevated above spiritual consciousness. And that is a day we shall never forget. For, it is the day when the power of love triumphs in our karmic experience.
Jakeb Brock is a spiritual teacher and the author of The New Consciousness: What Our World Needs Most. Visit www.ournewconsciousness.com or www.facebook.com/thenewconsciousness.
By Jakeb Brock
This has been the Age of Adam—an evolutionary plateau in which the consciousness of the human collective has been moving in a state that was prophetically described, albeit it briefly, in the beginning pages of the Bible. This Adamic state is one of dualistic thinking, fear, separation, and self-determination. It is primarily a mental state, wherein each individual human being born onto this plane of existence sees it as his or her destiny to become as humanly smart, colorful, multi-faceted, and well-defined as they can—to flesh themselves out with opinions and mentally instigated tendencies that act as defining characteristics of their personality. Thus we all have become uniquely individualistic people and take pride in the fact that there is no other person in the entire world that is exactly like us.
This fleshed-out complex personality, also known as ego, is not something we are born with. In fact, about the only thing we are born with is our biological givens—the way we look, the capabilities of our mind, etc. So in order to become the unique person we feel destined to become we must build our own unique personality profile and portfolio. And this building process tends to be an ongoing, lifelong endeavor. We never stop enhancing our ego with new likes and dislikes, viewpoints, and quirky attributes. Then once we find something that seems to fit us well we add it to our personality portfolio, like pushing the save button on our computer. And once something is saved, it becomes a part of us—a defining attribute that contributes to our unique profile.
All this is what makes life interesting. For, being social creatures by nature, most of us also have become part of an extended social circle consisting of family members, friends, and acquaintances. And within this circle we eagerly participate, interacting and adding to its ambience. How do we do this? By expressing our unique self and being fully ourselves, while simultaneously receiving input from others pertaining to their unique selves. Of course, there is no guarantee that others will always warm up to our unique self, and when they do not we feel the emotional pain of rejection and alienation. So human socialization as we have known it up to now has always carried some risks with it. But still, most people feel committed to this process so that they do their best to roll with the punches and continue to let their unique self be known.
This is how life in the Adamic state of consciousness is lived. And as we continue to build on it, it can have the appearance of fullness—an appearance that has not only sustained many individuals born onto this plane in this age but has also perpetuated the collective reality view and rendered the status quo inviolable. And so Adamic consciousness has become entrenched to the point that we call it reality. What we have failed to understand is that all states of human consciousness are subject to change and evolve. Adamic consciousness has been the human collective’s defining consciousness throughout this age, but that does not mean that it is forever. To believe this has been a mistake. In fact, the belief itself is a product of Adamic consciousness.
We think we know what it means to be a human being. That is what our reality view consists of—all the ways and means whereby human life ought to be lived. And this is what we have all been conditioned to believe and move in. But not only is this reality view ephemeral, it is also highly constrictive and restrictive; it sells us terrifically short. That is why many people are attracted to the spiritual life. They have lived long enough under the Adamic system to perceive its emptiness and ask themselves: Is this really all there is to life? And they have become confused by the collective’s insistence that this is as good as it gets and one is simply deluding oneself to believe differently.
Then there is the condition of our world. Why does this matter? Because our world is a precise reflection of our collective consciousness. So what does the condition of our world tell us? Does it agree with the collective’s indoctrination? Does it reflect the fullness of life? No, of course not. Not only is it flawed with violence and hatred; it is also empty and vain, and those who are drawn to the spiritual life can sense this.
Thus the condition of the world testifies to the truth about Adamic consciousness. And what is that truth? That it is not the ultimate enlightened consciousness for mankind. Rather it is, in fact, a lower, seed-nature state on the evolutionary scale of consciousness. That is why it sells us short. We can and will become much more, once we have left Adamic consciousness behind. That is the purpose of all spiritual practice. The collective may have boxed itself in to Adamic consciousness for the duration, but we, as individuals, do not need to follow its lead blindly. We can leave Adamic consciousness behind in our hearts and evolve to the next level. The question then becomes: How? How do we leave Adamic consciousness behind?
The first step is to admit to ourselves that we have been lied to about the nature of Adamic consciousness and that our conditioned reality view is off-kilter as a result—that the Adamic way of viewing life is not the fullness it has purported itself to be. This is a revelatory singular step, which, once arrived at, needs little further process to back it up. The second step differs, however, in that it requires more work and process.
The second step involves the personality-self we have built. For, in the same way that we must divorce ourselves from the collective’s reality view, we must also root out its influence from within us. In order to pave the way for a new state of consciousness to be born in us we must divest ourselves of all traces of the old. We must completely dismantle and cast out the edifice of ego that we have built. Why? Because, in truth, this edifice is an intrusive borrowed construct. It is an edifice that we built while under the influence of the collective’s cultural indoctrination. We built it, but we did not know what we were doing when we did so. We were taught exactly how to do this through the socialization of the collective. Now we must reverse that process. The very edifice that we built, we must now tear down. This may seem like a daunting task, but the good news is that it can most definitely be done.
This is the reason that in Eastern spiritual circles self-realization is put forth as a key to spiritual practice. For before we can tear down this false foreign edifice we must learn about it. We must go inward and see what it is made of. We must realize this false self so that we can begin building a true self. And one of the first things we see is that the edifice is actually constructed of flimsy materials. That is why it is within our capability to tear it down. It is not constructed of concrete and stone. Rather it is made up of thoughts, beliefs, opinions, ideas, etc. In other words, all the materials that have gone into this construct are shadowy and mental. True, it may appear that the edifice is strong and invincible, but how invincible is a belief? How immovable is an opinion? No, these can, in fact, be quite easily torn down through self-realization.
In actuality, all these things we have come to believe in are fictional. They are a big fat story, nothing more. Interestingly, this is one of the foremost characteristics of Adamic consciousness. It is a story-telling consciousness. Of course, these stories, if we cling to them as real can do real harm and damage. That is why most wars are fought. One side clings to a certain story that brings them into conflict with another side that is doing the exact same thing—that is, clinging to a story they have embraced. So we see that Adamic consciousness is a war-like consciousness. It promotes division and hatred.
This quality of Adamic consciousness is not only applicable to large groups or nations. It happens on an individual basis also. The story that one person believes in comes into conflict with the story that another person believes in and presto: instant dislike and hatred ensues. So while our inward edifice may be flimsy and shadowy, it often causes us to come into conflict with others.
Our story is developed and enhanced as we have life experiences. And to the degree that we feel closed and threatened about our story’s vulnerability we become a combative hateful person. When we are born we have no story. Therefore we have no conflict. Then as we go through life we begin to hear the stories of others and decide to try them out for ourselves. Thus most stories are borrowed. Meanwhile, the more content we add to our story, the more our ego thrives and the stronger it feels. So it is not uncommon for an ego to branch out and embrace more than one story line. That is how borrowing stories has become an effective ego ploy. There is a multitude of them to choose from out there, and there are no patents or ownership rights. In other words, all stories are fair game; they belong to everyone.
Of course, the stories themselves are not the problem. Most of them are relatively harmless. Rather it is in clinging to a certain story and insisting that it is the one truth that we run into trouble. This is what brings us into conflict with others, not the story itself. That is why there have been so many wars fought over religion. It is because most major religions are unabashedly dogmatic. They insist that theirs is the one and only truth. But all this is an illusion of Adamic consciousness, nothing more. For, how are religions built? Through story telling. Some of these stories are borrowed and some may be original, in that they were first believed in by a certain group or individual. But they are still just stories.
Attachment to our particular story happens when we begin to identify ourselves with it. This happens when our ego, in an attempt to strengthen itself and become bigger, latches on to a story to such an extent that the story takes on the status of dogmatic truth. Thus we invest ourselves in it. We literally become our story and from that time forward we live and die accordingly. This causes us, in turn, to totally lose sight of the truth of who we are.
This is one of the main factors that keeps us stuck on the karmic wheel. If the story we are clinging to consumes our identity unto our dying day, we will die in ignorance of our true identity. And it is only by realizing our true identity that we can put an end to our karma. So our death will be a strictly mortal and unfruitful one, and a new incarnation will most certainly await us.
Eventually, however, we begin to suspect that our tendency to borrow a story and identify ourselves with it is a trick of Adamic consciousness and ego. It is Adamic consciousness expressing itself and ego attempting to dominate our psyche and grow larger. We learn that our true identity needs no story to define itself. It is already complete, whole, and perfect.
And so, as we progress in the spiritual life we begin to reject the tendencies of Adamic consciousness, including story building. We deny our ego and go forward into a new realm of consciousness, wherein there is no need for borrowed props or identity constructs. We say no to this karma-perpetuating illusion and streamline our inner life to reflect only the truth about who we are. We see that all stories are mere fictions and investing ourselves in them as if they were truth is a lie. And so we let go of our stories and in so doing, begin to be our true Self.
Jakeb Brock is a spiritual teacher and the author of The New Consciousness: What Our World Needs Most. Visit www.ournewconsciousness.com or www.facebook.com/thenewconsciousness.
By Jakeb Brock We talk a good deal about raising or developing or elevating consciousness. Let us now take a closer look at what this means. First of all, it is not really our consciousness that needs raising; it is our personal, individual state of consciousness. Consciousness itself needs no improvement, for it is …
By Judy Wilkins-Smith If mothers are traditionally considered to be the source of life and flow, fathers are often regarded as the hunters, providers, and the ones who introduce us to the ways of the world. Times are changing, but the essence of the male energy remains crucial to the creation, sustenance and joy of …
By Dean Fraser BSYA (BL) Public speaking had already become second nature to me, I felt (and still do) a buzz of excitement of pure joy stood before an audience ready to communicate. This will always be an inherently two-way communication. I know my own story inside out; I prefer to know yours and then …
By Jakeb Brock
All of us who have felt an attraction to the spiritual life and responded to that attraction have actually responded to another subtle dynamic at work in our universe—the call of consciousness. This is because the divine consciousness that we call God created the universe out of the substance of consciousness, and this substance has also been planted within the heart of every human being. Moreover, our human endowment of consciousness is not separate from the divine and never could be. It is linked through the oneness of created energy.
As many of us have discovered, spiritual consciousness, though an impersonal life force, has certain properties and characteristics. And this holds true for the universal divine consciousness, as well as for our human endowment. One of these properties is that of a sort of vibration that reaches out to connect with other manifestations of consciousness within its orbit. This property is almost like that of a magnet in the natural world, which is, of course, a scientific attraction. That is why we are drawn to the divine. And as it turns out, the divine is also drawn to us. It is consciousness reaching out for other manifestations of consciousness to be connected to.
As human beings living busy lives in this materialistic world, very few of us were aware of this dynamic. We knew little about consciousness and probably nothing about its properties. But then something changed for us. We were mystically introduced to the phenomenon of spiritual life and began to feel a powerful attraction to it. At first, we probably saw this attraction as being a human one, because that is how we saw everything. In other words, we might have felt attracted to the trappings of spiritual practice, the people who pursue it, the benefits it promised, etc. Those were all human aspects to our attraction. What we did not understand was that there was also this property of consciousness at work. On a totally spiritual, unseen plane consciousness was calling to consciousness. And without knowing it, by feeling that attraction and responding to it we just happened to answer that call. In the Bible’s book of Psalms this phenomenon is poetically described thusly: “Deep calls to deep in the roar of your waterfalls; all your waves and breakers have swept over me.” (Psalms 42:7). And this is a very apt description because nothing in our universe is as deep as consciousness.
Consciousness is perpetually exerting this energy. Thus the call of consciousness never stops. It has no beginning and no end. This aspect of its character is based on scientific principles, just like a magnet. But human beings, while endowed inwardly with consciousness, also have the capability of discernment. This means that we can choose whether or not to recognize our own endowment of consciousness and allow ourselves to feel an attraction to the pull of the divine consciousness. And, of course, most people choose to ignore consciousness and its various properties and manifestations altogether. Instead they focus their discerning mind on worldly, materialistic realities. In this way they distract themselves from being able to perceive something as subtle as spiritual consciousness. But then something called karma enters the picture, and this force of destiny tends to overrule our own conditioned inclination toward distraction. For those of us whose karma dictates that we be mystically introduced or reintroduced to the spiritual life, the attraction is born and the journey begins. It overrides our discernment, and we respond. Deep calls to deep and crashes upon us like the waves of the ocean.
So consciousness calls to consciousness, and it is up to us to hear and heed that call. That is why one of the typical first steps on the spiritual journey is to view God as a personal separate being—one whose nature is proactive, individualized, and purposeful. The reason we do this is twofold. First, we have not yet learned about the true properties of consciousness. And second, because of our engrained human orientation it is difficult for us to conceive of an impersonal scientific life force displaying purposeful, proactive properties. In other words, if divine consciousness is exerting a call and we hear that call in the privacy of our own heart, that call must be personal. Hence we ascribe to the universal consciousness a personal name (such as God, Buddha, Christ, etc.) and build a world religion based on that name and whatever personal attributes we can attach to it.
But eventually we come to see that not only is this personal element misleading; it is also superfluous. It has no real purpose, other than the acting out of our human need to see things that way. And it has no power. When our emotional needs enter into the picture, the call is actually watered down and rendered superficial. Its depth and profundity become lost. On one level we have answered the call and are responding to it, but this response is often borrowed and contrived. That is why our prayers go unanswered and our lives unchanged. But when we answer the call and respond to it in truth we immediately tap into a powerful current of life—one that changes us and meets our every need. This is because consciousness is not only proactive in its connective vibration; it is also powerful as a healing-supplying force for human beings. And it is for this reason that a spiritual practice that has begun and been guided by a true answering of the call can and will change our lives much for the better.
The Bible describes several instances of regular people like you and me hearing and answering the universal call. And though most of these instances are portrayed in a personal format, the power inherent in them testifies to the fact that something real was coming through. In other words, those who were called received power from responding to the call and went on to become prophets or ministers or to fulfill other important historical roles. So we read of a man like Abraham being called out of a normal worldly involvement, set apart, instructed, and given an altogether new and different purpose in life. First, he heard the call in the form of speech instructing him about what to do. Then he responded with faith. This is where the power came in. For, faith is a spiritual dynamic. It is an attribute of consciousness. So even though it is doubtful that Abraham viewed his call as a scientific outworking of consciousness, by exercising faith he brought forth the power from that outworking nonetheless.
The prophet Samuel heard the call of deep to deep while still a young child. Lying in his bed one night, he heard a voice call his name. But this was obviously a karmic outworking that he knew nothing about. So he simply assumed that the voice belonged to his mentor Eli who was lying down in a nearby room. Getting out of his bed, he went into Eli’s room and asked him if he had called him. But Eli told him no, and Samuel returned to his own bed. Then the voice came again and again yet a third time. Finally Eli realized what was happening and instructed Samuel in how to respond. And sure enough, from that day forward the Word of God came regularly to Samuel, and he became a great prophet of Israel.
Both of these Biblical callings appear to be personal and purposeful on the part of God (consciousness). It seems as though a personal God were exerting His sovereign will to call a specific individual to an appointed task. But when we understand the true properties of consciousness and the scientific impersonal nature of the universal call, we see that something else was at work. Both of these biblical characters responded because it was their karma to do so. Through their own spiritual evolution and experiences in both their present and past lives they had been prepared to hear and receive the universal call. And the seemingly specific purposes they were called to were simply their individual destinies coming into realization. In other words, they each heard the call instruct them in a unique way because their destinies decreed as much. Thus we see that the call is always the same but that the unique karmic destinies of men cause it to appear multifarious.
Like Samuel and Abraham, all of us who have answered the call of deep to deep have had a unique experience. We have all heard the call in an individualized way and received specially tailored instruction and guidance about how to respond and to what purpose we were being called. This is because we all have a unique karmic destiny. But because the nature of consciousness is impersonal and unchanging, all of our stories also have a similar quality. The call is the same because it is impersonal consciousness doing the calling. But our interpretation of that call is unique because we are unique. As in the Bible, some of us hear a voice; others feel only an attraction; some receive the call in a dream, and others get hit over the head with it through circumstantial upheaval.
The Bible calls those who received the call prophets. But in our world that title is not often applied. In our world we have spiritual aspirants, students, and practitioners. But in truth, this is not much different than being a prophet. For what is a prophet? It is simply a human being that has opened up the channels of his or her spiritual perception and endeavored to keep those channels open and flowing. We all have this ability. And if it is our karmic destiny to hear the call and respond, we will each receive a unique impartation or message from the divine Spirit. Thus we will become prophets in our own right.
The divine consciousness is not secretive; nor is it a respecter of persons. The divine will is multifaceted but one. It is like a diamond with many sides. When we answer and respond to the universal call we will all have a similar path ahead of us, in that we will instinctively seek to bring our lives into conformity with the divine will. How we bring this conformity to pass will, however, be unique, on account of our unique destinies.
All manifestations of consciousness are divine and seek to be attuned to the one will. There is nothing mysterious about this. Human beings may be unaware and distracted, but that in no way impedes the movement or will of universal consciousness. The human psyche may be overrun by and become enslaved to many base human impulses, but consciousness is never chained. It is forever free. That is why answering the call of deep to deep can be such a powerful liberating experience for us. For by conforming ourselves to the nature and will of consciousness we invite that power to take the reins of our lives and transform us into its image.
The New Age is simply the age when consciousness will finally be recognized by human beings as the power that it is and our world brought into conformity with the divine will. It will be a time wherein all the inhabitants of the earth have heard and responded to the universal call of deep to deep. This outworking is inevitable for us because it is the ultimate outworking of our own created evolutionary instincts. In this way we are destined to become an entire race of prophets, with every man, woman and child attuned to the divine will. The dark night of our strictly human orientation to life is far spent. The dawning of the New Age is upon us.
Jakeb Brock is a spiritual teacher and the author of The New Consciousness: What Our World Needs Most. Visit www.ournewconsciousness.com or www.facebook.com/thenewconsciousness.
By TJ Woodward
Forgiveness is a very powerful tool in letting go of the perspectives that keep us in a limited and limiting way of seeing and being. Forgiveness allows us to move more deeply into the truth of who and what we are, to eradicate our stories of separation, powerlessness, and being stuck in blaming and victimization. Many of us have a terrifically hard time with forgiveness. We feel that terrible things have happened in our lives, and we are unable to let them go. So, let’s start there, with the experience of forgiveness that many of us have had. When we’re stuck in unconscious reactions, forgiveness is next to impossible. The beliefs we hold about ourselves and our world become the lens through which we view the world, and the way we frame our stories. They limit our perspective and block us from freedom and authenticity. When we’re living at this victim/martyr level of consciousness, hearing about the need to forgive can push us further into limitation.
If we are holding the idea that we’re fundamentally a victim, then “forgiveness” may look like admitting that we are “wrong” or “bad,” and that we “deserve what we get.” Or it can look like giving up, admitting that the other person is stronger or better and that we cannot ever win. From this level of awareness, forgiveness supposes that we’ve been harmed, or have lost and that we need to forgive the person who harmed us, which can feel like basically admitting that the person who hurt us has won. From the perspective of a victim, forgiveness might also mean pretending that things that happened in the past never happened. This requires forgetting and burying things deep in the shadow.
Either way, this kind of forgiveness can further strengthen the belief in our own victimization because it’s based on the idea that something “bad” needs to be made right by either rationalizing it or burying it. This tends to create more suffering and more limitations. And that is not empowerment. As you begin to identify and let go of all those deeply held beliefs about yourself and the world that keep you in a reactive state, as you experience more authenticity in the safety of a supportive community, as you practice the spiritual principles, as you open to the power of spirit, your experience of forgiveness will begin to shift.
We may think of forgiveness as making peace with the past. That means different things from different perspectives. From a place of non-judgment, the past is what it is. The past cannot be different—we cannot go back and change what happened. But we can alter the way we see it. As the saying goes, “It’s never too late to have a happy childhood.” What this quote means to me is that as we do our healing work, we can look at the past through a different lens. We can truly find a place of gratitude no matter how our childhood looked. This is in no way saying that we don’t sometimes feel pain or sadness about our past. What it is pointing to is that we have the power within ourselves to reframe and find gratitude in any of our past situations.
This shift may not happen overnight, and in certain situations, reconciliation might not be easy. Even as you’re doing the internal work and growing in awareness, you may still tend to experience forgiveness as directed outward, focusing on how someone, even you, has treated others rather than on your own inner movement. If your experience of forgiveness pushes you back into your stories of victimhood, that may mean you need to do some more work to help break the cycle. Or it may just mean you need to ask yourself some further questions, to reap the benefits of all the inner work you’ve been doing. So, let’s look at some of those questions.
Think of a situation in which you find it difficult to forgive. What is the story you have been telling about that situation? Where have you been especially attached to that story—what belief does it support? Is there another way to look at it? Keeping that situation in mind, what happens when you let go of the idea that one story is “right?” What happens when you approach what happened with the neutrality of an impartial observer? Can you let go of your initial reactive story about the situation and open yourself to other possible perspectives? If you can, what happens when you do that?
When we let go of the ego’s attachment to a particular story or a specific verdict about who is “right” and who is “wrong,” could it be that we no longer even need to forgive? If we release our hold on “right” or “wrong,” it’s easier to see people as reacting and responding out of their own perspectives, their own limited experiences and imperfect knowledge. It’s then a relatively short step to move from guilt, remorse, and forgiveness to something more like responsibility, resolution, and reconciliation. We don’t need to ignore the pain in our lives. For instance, we would not stay in an abusive relationship out of the idea that “There is no guilt here; whatever happens, happens.” We would not believe that we are no longer accountable for our actions because, “Hey, I’ve let go of ego.” That is not witness consciousness. It’s possibly denial.
Of course, we’re accountable. Of course, we might still feel pain. When we feel hurt, our first reaction might be to feel anger, to lash out, to want to harbor a grudge. When we experience those reactions in conscious awareness, we might still feel that pain, but then we go on to witness it, to observe our reactions and then choose how to respond, letting go of the need for someone to be wrong or right. Similarly, if we do something that causes pain to someone else, we may still feel an initial trigger of shame, and maybe from that feeling springs defensive anger. In conscious awareness, we’re able to look at these reactions compassionately, which empowers us to then move beyond them to choose the next step.
When we arrive at the mystical level of consciousness, of recognizing our oneness with life, there is no longer anything to forgive. This place of alignment with ultimate reality acknowledges that the cause of anyone’s harmful behavior is separation from their essential self. When we reach a state of oneness with source, we recognize that there’s nothing to forgive because we can see that everything that’s happened in our life has played a part in our transformation; it’s been useful in getting us where we are. And as we grow in conscious awareness, forgiveness becomes more of a natural process. At this level of awareness, we shift from forgiveness to compassion and gratitude.
TJ Woodward is a revolutionary recovery expert, inspirational speaker, educator, addiction treatment specialist, and author of Conscious Recovery.
By Jakeb Brock
We live in a very anxious world. And so, not surprisingly, one of the most insistent aspects of our upbringing is learning to fend for ourselves and use our human strength to gain the upper hand over uncertain circumstances. We do this primarily as a hedge against the anxious state of the world.
For most of us this posture of fending for ourselves has become habitual and deeply engrained in our psyche. It has become an unconscious conditioned response mechanism—one that we automatically click into when attempting to tackle the problems that invariably arise in our life situation. And because it is a conditioned response it tends to color our entire outlook and approach to living. What this means is that anxiety has become more than an emotion that we occasionally feel; it has become a way of life for us. It is with us at all times and in all situations. Therefore the common mindset of modern man is now an anxious mindset. And the common approach to dealing with life’s problems and challenges is to strive, fight, plot and scheme, calculate, etc.
Unfortunately, this kind of self-propelled mental energy tends to collide with the self-propelled mental energy of others, thereby bringing conflict and tension into our experience on an almost daily basis. It is not that we enjoy creating conflict with our fellowman, but with our anxiety driving us to fend for ourselves as our top priority we find ourselves creating our own little force field of hostility. This is also the reason that the overall tone of our society is one of strife and war. For what is society, but a large bunch of individuals each doing what they must do to survive.
Meanwhile, because this energy tends to be unconscious, it is actually being mostly played out on a subtle plane of reality. This subtle plane of reality might also be looked at as a kind of collective unconscious mind. And in the same way that an individual can only free him or herself from unconscious behavior through conscious awareness, the same holds true for the collective unconscious. The problem then becomes one of powerlessness when it comes to the collective. As individuals, we still have the power to change. But as a collective, the problem of unconsciousness has become too big to fix. In other words, an individual has the motivation and tools to make things right is his or her life. But the collective seems to have neither. And so its anxious state seems to go on and on, as if by perpetual motion.
Then to make matters even worse, our collective culture has over time come to equate striving with strength. This has had the effect of legitimizing the anxious state of the world. Why? Because our culture has always viewed strength as an admirable, almost virtuous quality. In our culture the world is perceived as a scary place, while strength is promoted as the tool to overcoming this perception. Nothing is done to try to make the world less scary. Rather individuals are taught to become so strong that they prosper even in the climate of anxious uncertainty.
Interestingly, when we come to the spiritual life, all of this starts to look glaringly insane. For, it does not take long for us to realize that the spiritual approach to life is one of pursuing peace and harmony and ceasing from our anxious striving. Instead of fending for ourselves, in the spiritual life we learn to relax and trust. Instead of fighting and controlling, we learn to rest and let things be as they are. Instead of allowing our problems to cause us to click into an unconscious reactive pattern, we seek to employ our conscious awareness to diffuse such patterns. Then little by little, we begin to see that we have been spreading hostility through our own unconscious impulse to fend for ourselves and we seek instead to become peacemakers. We also gain the revelation that human strength is not all that our culture paints it to be. Not only is it not an admirable quality; it is truly one of the most unspiritual energies a human being can move in. In truth, one who has attained great strength humanly is, at his or her core, a frightened, small human being.
And so it is that coming to the spiritual life turns out to be no small adjustment for us. Rather it is nothing short of the reversal of all that we have been moving in. That is why the New Testament equates it to becoming a new creation (2 Corinthians 5:17). And it is this matter of anxiety-induced behavior that is at the heart of our transformation. Going from an orientation of striving to one of trust is a monumental shift in our makeup.
Thus we see that learning to trust is actually one of the foundational underpinnings of the spiritual life. It not only constitutes a change in our behavior. It translates us from the human realm into the realm of the divine—from the earthly plane to the heavenly plane. Previously, we depended on our own human strength and were earthbound accordingly, but when we learn to trust we find ourselves depending on a power greater than ourselves and transcending the earthly plane altogether. And so we find that trust and faith are inextricably joined. We also find that learning to trust can require a leap of faith for us. For before we can learn to trust a higher power we must come to believe that such a power exists.
This does not mean that we have to know everything there is to know about this higher power. In truth, such knowledge is not even possible for us in our present state of consciousness evolution. But when learning to trust, it is enough for us to believe that a higher power exists. Then little by little we can take the leap of faith into the realm of trusting in that higher power. This may sound impossible for us to do, but in actuality, not only is it possible; it is not all that difficult.
Curiously, once our consciousness has developed to the point of being able to believe in and trust the higher power, knowledge about that power becomes secondary. What matters most is that we have ceased to trust in ourselves and our own strength and begun to look upward. For, it is this lifting up of our countenance that really moves mountains in our lives. For this reason it also matters little what we call the higher power. If we have ceased to trust in ourselves and have lifted our trust upward, we are all trusting in the same power. Our trust becomes like an impersonal posture that the universe recognizes as a posture for receiving its full quiver of blessing. And this dynamic then acts as a law unto our life experience.
Biblical wisdom confirms this mystical truth, when it says, “Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not upon your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge Him and He will make your pathways straight.” (Proverbs 3:4). The main variable that most people tend to fudge on in this passage is the word all. Learning to trust takes time and practice, and at first we must start small. In other words, we might trust a little but when push comes to shove we often revert to our old ways of human strength. We acknowledge the higher power on some level but find our faith to be a little lacking. Whereas, trusting with all our heart and acknowledging the higher power in all our ways implies a very high level of consciousness development. For in order to reach such a high level we must have done the inner work needed to disarm our unconscious conditioned response mechanism of anxious striving and have freed ourselves from its repetitive instigation. So you might not at first find that all of your pathways have been made straight, but be assured: once you are able to trust the higher power with all your heart, unprecedented blessings will begin to flow into your life.
The good news is that all of this is based on law. On the spiritual journey it is never a question of the higher power rewarding us or favoring us. That would make the higher power an unpredictable, personal, almost whimsical entity. And we know that It is not like that. But based on law the universe recognizes our posture of trust and good things begin to come our way. It also recognizes when we are not trusting with all our heart, for this too constitutes a legal posture—one that may for a time result in only a partial flow of blessing.
Where did Jesus weigh in on all this? Not surprisingly, he not only echoed the Old Testament’s teaching about trust; he took it a step further. He taught about the legal dynamic of the posture of trust and he taught us how to make sure progress towards achieving that posture. How did he do this? He gave us a very simple tool for de fanging our subconscious storehouse of anxiety—a tool that we are all very familiar with and have often used in other situations. This tool is the tool of logic and reason.
“Do not worry about your life,” he said. “Consider the ravens. They do not sow or reap; they have no storeroom or barn; yet God feeds them. . . . Who of you by worrying can add a single hour to your life? Since you cannot do this very little thing, why do you worry about the rest? Do not set your heart on what you will eat of drink, do not worry about it. But seek his kingdom, and these things will be given to you as well.” (Luke 12:22-31). And so Jesus exposed worry as being not only unspiritual but also illogical. In other words, it makes no sense. So why do we do it? It is because we have lost sight of who we were created to be. We have believed the lie that separation from God and an independent life built by human strength is the highest expression of our human hood. This has caused us to have to fend for ourselves and has created a world of Darwinian strife—an anxious world, in which only the strong can survive. We have also lost sight of the nature and laws of the universe, wherein it is not a posture of isolation and strength that attracts blessedness and makes our pathways straight; rather it is a posture of wholehearted trust. Thus the entire orientation of human life has become an aberration. And as Jesus pointed out, it is not only aberrant; it is illogical.
To live by anxious striving and the exertion of our human strength is diametrically opposed to how we were created to live. No wonder such an approach has resulted in the devaluation and debasement of human life. No wonder that as individuals each one of us is beset with health problems, financial difficulties, and relationship issues. No wonder we live lives of quiet desperation—lives that are hard, frustrating, exhausting, and unfulfilling. And no wonder that the one constant that has characterized our world climate since the beginning of the age is one of hostility and war.
Meanwhile, the solution to all these problems is one in the same. It is to do the inner work of consciousness development that will bring us into harmony with our original created blueprint. That is what Jesus meant when he said to seek the kingdom of God first. That is the right order of things, not seek to insulate ourselves from anxiety and fear by becoming super strong in our isolated posture.
Trusting in the higher power with all our hearts may require a leap of faith for us at this point in time. But logic and the laws of the universe concur: It is and always has been the right way for us to live—that is, the way of peace, goodness, and the fullness of life. We not only were created to live without being anxious; we do not even need to take thought for our lives. Why? Because the higher power of our universe has already seen to our provision and well-being in the act of creation. All we need to do is to learn to trust.
Jakeb Brock is a spiritual teacher and the author of The New Consciousness: What Our World Needs Most. Visit www.ournewconsciousness.com or www.facebook.com/thenewconsciousness.
By Cyndi Dale
We don’t tend to think that getting in shape is a sport, but for those of us who don’t want to fit into yesterday’s outfit—or the newest look—it sure is. And I’m not talking about garb for a couch-potato.
You might not be aware of the fact, but energy medicine has a lot to offer the recliner-competitor who wants to turn into an athletic-contender. It can help you get your mind in shape to get your body in shape. I’m going to explain how all-things energy can improve your form—at all levels.
Let’s start with the basic premise, which Albert Einstein and other geniuses established as truth eons ago. Everything is composed of energy, which is “information that moves.” For instance, the data in your coffee differentiates a café au lait from a straight-up black. The vibration of the molecules in your mug makes the java cold or hot brewed.
When we focus on goals like lifting weights, toning muscle, and slimming down, we usually concentrate on the physical attributes of energy. A good part of all energy is physical, or measurable and concrete. However, there are two types of energy, and less than one percent is physical.
That’s right. The other type of energy, which constitutes 99.999 percent-plus of all energy, is subtle, which could also be called psychic, spiritual, or quantum.[1] Subtle isn’t weak, as subtle energies organize physical energies. That means that most of what appears in 3-D reality—including the muffin top of holiday treats around your middle—is there because of the programming contained in subtle energy.
Subtle energy is mainly managed by consciousness, or focused awareness. The more popular term for this action is intention. It seems rather lame to think that you can change your body, and change your life, by being intentional, but it’s quite true. First, let me explain how physical reality can be altered with mental effort, which is a form of consciousness.
Subtle energy is best explained by quantum physics. Quanta are the smallest known wave-particles in the universe, and they are super tiny. As I explore in relation to the body and sportiness in my book, Energy Work for the Everyday to Elite Athlete,[2] these subtle mighty-morphins are regulated by very strange rules, to include these:
- They only become concrete when observed. The winter-you in the mirror? That’s a product of quanta made real by factors including your self-image. If you alter your self-image, you can steadily transform the mirror-self.
- They can jump from one state to another, therefore altering reality. This means that no matter how stuck a situation seems, it can be shifted.
- They obey something called the Uncertainty Principle. It’s super complicated, but it basically says that we can’t know everything about something all at once. Your thoughts can’t give you a complete picture of reality—but you can use a tool like positivity to keep increasing what you desire.
In simple terms, positivity counts.
Consider that way back in 1995, in the non-sporty world, Mahendra Kumar Trivedi, called Guruji, could alter physical reality with simple blessings. For a few minutes, he’d focus on a situation, and it would improve. Studies show his focus increased seed germination and survival rates amongst blessed plants to 99.5 percent, compared to 60 to 65 percent in control crops. He bolstered yields in a chickpea plot by 350 percent over control yields.[3]
In line with this result, several scientific studies are moving us closer to the end zone in our understanding of the power of intention to director subtle energies, which, in turn, help organize physical energies. Included in the growing body of evidence is a study from the Cleveland Clinic that discovered that participants could strengthen muscles just by visualizing a physical movement. While gym rats increased their muscle-strength by 30 percent, individuals who merely visualized their workouts bettered their muscular strength by 13.5 percent.
It pays to combine the mental and physical. By joining physical action with mental focus, you can cut your actual practice hours in half. That conclusion applies to performance, as well as to practice.[4]
You can use upbeat focus to enable better food choices too.
We know that food influences mood, but the opposite is also true. In fact, a study has shown that individuals making food choices while embracing attributes such as optimism and gratitude make healthier food choices.[5] That’s how the placebo effect works. By believing a positive outcome will occur, you’re far more likely to experience that result—even if you don’t believe in the placebo effect.[6] The nocebo effect has also been proven. If you think something will have a negative impact, it most likely will.[7]
What ways would I suggest you start steering your subtle energies this winter so you can best spring into spring—and the summer? Here are a few ideas.
- Tell yourself that your everyday movements are exercise. Yup, when you’re lifting a fork, imagine that it is as heavy as a forklift! One particularly interesting study that I read years ago found that by simply telling hotel maids that their everyday work was “exercise,” their bodies responded dramatically—with decreased blood pressure, body fat, and body mass, within just one week.[8]
- Hold spiritual qualities in your heart. That’s right. Self-love will automate your choices. Get in shape with mantras like hope, love, and gratitude. There is truly a subtle science to this idea. Every time pressure is produced in the body, such as when your heart beats, phonons are produced. These are tiny quantum energies that arise from atoms oscillating or moving in a crystal. If you are focused on positive qualities, the resulting phonons will bring positive messages throughout your body and greatly improve your health.[9]
- That’s right. Three times a day, look in the mirror. See yourself as you desire to be, even while you love yourself as you are. Then get busy visualizing an activity. Running, lifting, flexing…if you move a little while exercising in your imagination, you’ll get in shape even faster!
Bottom line, know that what you focus on will expand. Stream those subtle energies toward a svelte and shapely you, and that is what will emerge.
Cyndi Dale is the author of over 30 internationally renowned energy medicine books including Energy Work for the Everyday to Elite Athlete. www.cyndidale.com
.[1] Ali Sundermier, 99.9999999% of Your Body is Empty Space, September 23, 2016, Science Alert, www.sciencealert.com/99-9999999-of-your-body-is-empty-space.
[2] Cyndi Dale, Energy Work for the Everyday to Elite Athlete (Woodbury, MN: Llewellyn Publications), 2023.
[3] Ibid, 16.
[4] Michael Miller, “Envisioning Your Way to Success,” January 15, 2018, sixseconds, 6seconds.org/2018/01/15/envisioning-way-success-incredible-power-mental-practice/.
[5] Alba Carrillo et al, “The role of positive psychological constructs in diet and eating behavior among people with metabolic syndrome,” January 5, 2022, Sage Journals, journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/20551029211055264.
[6] Maj-Britt Niemi, Placebo Effect: A Cure in the Mind,” February 1, 2009, Scientific American, www.scientificamerican.com/article/placebo-effect-a-cure-in-the-mind/.
[7] Danny Minkow, “The Nocebo Effect,” August 26th, 2014, Students 4 Best Evidence, s4be.cochrane.org/blog/2015/08/26/the-nocebo-effect/.
[8] Christopher Shea, “Mindful Exercise,” December 9, 2007, The New York Times Magazine, nytimes.com/2007/12/09/magazine/09mindfulexercise.html.
[9] Peter H. Fraser and Harry Massey, Decoding the Human Body-Field: The New Science of Information as Medicine, New York: Simon and Schuster, 2008.206–214.
By Jakeb Brock
The prevailing scientific view is that we human beings are biological creatures of the earth and that our present place of supremacy among the other earthly species is the result of a biological evolutionary thrust, out from which we emerged with strong supple bodies and highly developed minds. This is, in fact, according to science, the summation of all there really is to know about us. As for the complexities of human life that we are all so familiar with, these are actually illusory and imaginary—that is to say, they are nothing more than the byproducts of our overactive, highly developed brains. Our emotions, thoughts, and layered behaviors all have a biological basis, in that they are all activities of mind. Therefore human life is not complex in reality. It only seems that way to us because our minds tend to work unchecked and be overactive.
Also according to this view, the only true knowledge is empirical knowledge. In other words, it is knowledge arrived at through the discovery and study of “the real.” And what is the real? It is only that which can be perceived with our five biological human senses: seeing, hearing, touching, smelling, and tasting. Everything else that we call knowledge, such as ideas, intuitive deductions, and instinctual awareness is, in fact, inappropriately called knowledge because it is not arrived at through empirical processes. Rather it is mentally conceived and enhanced—that is, it is just mind stuff.
This then describes human life in a nutshell. Once we are able to delineate between and separate the real from our indulgent mind stuff complexity will cease to be part of the human experience, and what we will be left with will be a very streamlined and basic worldview. This is where the scientific community would like to take us, but we seem to be dragging our heels and resisting their prodding.
Our recalcitrance in this matter has caused more than one scientist to scratch his head in perplexity. Even some who are not a part of the scientific community find it to be a curious phenomenon. For, the only plausible explanation is that we are for some reason attached to our own suffering and complexity. And there is perhaps also a fear factor at work. We fear that the pure pragmatism of the scientific view would ultimately reduce us to clone-like automatons. True, in that scenario we would no longer have the problems and difficulties that we have now. But neither would we have passion, ideals, imagination, dreams, etc. Once we got a handle on our superfluous mind stuff and were able to rein it in and relinquish it, human life would become one hundred percent biological—a biology that would still elevate us above the other species but would no longer include the entire element of mental projection that we now so freely indulge in.
And so science has the enigmatic distinction of being both our savior and our worst enemy at the same time. It is our savior because it is laboring to move us into a saner, more pragmatic reality, but it is our worst enemy because in order for us to lay hold of its brand of salvation we would need to relinquish our attachment to all the added elements that we associate with living a rich and full human life at present.
Since we cannot fully embrace the salvation that science offers and remain attached to our present way of going about things, the choice before us then becomes painfully clear: Do we want to trade our present sufferings and sometimes overwhelming complexities for a purely biological existence? We have put our trust in science and technology, and this is where it has brought us. Even now our complexities, while still indulged on the level of “quaintness,” are being exposed as non-essential mental pandering. Even now our attachment to them is steadily eroding. Even now those who are still clinging to the “old way” are being treated as dinosaurs. Even now human life, as we have known it, is slipping into obsolescence. Thus the fate of the human experience now hangs in the balance.
What is perhaps most poignant about this crossroads we have come to is that it never had to come to this. It was not a predestined, inevitable outcome to the human story. Rather it has come to pass for two primary reasons. First, the masses of humanity have always seen themselves unworthy of and shunned enlightenment. And second, we have willingly turned our fate over to those that we considered to be well-educated experts and commissioned them to guide us towards a better life. Thus we have no one to blame but ourselves. These two age-old collective dynamics have brought us to our present point of impasse, and their correction is what needs to happen in order for us to get back on the right track. The masses must take on the responsibility of individual enlightenment, and then, if we still have the need for them, we must appoint truly enlightened men and women to lead us. As it has been up until now, human society has been characterized by the proverb: the blind leading the blind.
Besides this proverbial comparison being applicable to our present condition, it also points to the fact that these things have not come to pass without warning. There have, in fact, been numerous warnings given us. A veritable plethora of prophets and seers have foreseen these days and urged us to change our direction. But our masses have persisted in their sloth and ignorance, and our scientists have dismissed the entire lump sum of warnings as the rantings of madmen because they were not empirical in nature.
The question we must now ask ourselves is: Did those who tried so earnestly to warn us know something that we do not? For, either they were indeed madmen or they understood something about human life that we have still yet to learn (or have forgotten). There can be no other deduction to make about their actions.
So let us suppose for a moment that they were not simply mad. Instead let us humble ourselves and ask: What might it be? What might they have known? Based on their earnest approach, they were obviously compassionate human beings who cared deeply about their fellowman. But even more than that, their actions speak of knowledge. It was as if they had a key that unlocked the entire mystery of human life—one truth about the human makeup that would cause everything else to come into focus; one revelation, which once collectively acknowledged and integrated would bring true sanity and goodness to the human scene, instead of delivering us onto the shoals of despair. Through their pragmatism our scientists have perpetually upheld empirical process as the only legitimate form of knowledge. But they have also steered us to the brink. Meanwhile, the discoveries and secrets of the ancient spiritual masters promise to take us in the exact opposite direction.
In approaching these matters we must first let go of the prejudices we have adopted about the vehicles that were used to make the teachings of the ancient masters known to the world. These prejudices are largely the result of having allowed scientific pragmatism to hold sway over human society. Most of the testimony of the ancient seers was passed down to us through what are now considered to be religious texts. But as it turns out, their knowledge—the knowledge we are missing—was not the least bit religious. It was, in fact, scientific.
The science pertaining to man, as we now know it, is strictly biological. But the ancients were in possession of a thriving science that transcended biology. This science is the study of human consciousness. Our scientists certainly acknowledge the phenomenon of consciousness, but they have refused to embark upon its study because consciousness is not perceptible by the five human senses and therefore cannot be approached from an empirical angle. It is not biological; it is spiritual. And spirit has no basis in biology.
Spirit is the substance of the ether. It is not of the earth and does not belong to the physical universe. In fact, it has no connection to the physical aspects of our universe whatsoever. Human beings, however, possess the capability of perceiving spirit. But because it is not biological, our approach to its study has for the most part drifted into the realm of religious mysticism. In order to perceive spirit human beings have needed to develop a sixth sense—a sense that the religious mystics call faith.
Faith is the vehicle of perception, by which human beings can perceive and study the ethereal realm and its substance: spirit. Though science recognizes the ethereal realm as extant, it refuses to acknowledge faith as a legitimate sense of perception. Thus science has concluded that the ethereal realm exists but is imperceptible to human beings.
But the ancients saw faith in a different light. For them, it was as much of a valid human sense as seeing or hearing. The only difference in their minds between faith and the five physical senses was that faith needed to be willfully cultivated. Its essential functional capability was within us, but it had to be uncovered and brought to life by an act of the human will. It was a given aspect of our created makeup just like the other senses but was buried deep within the psyche and remained so until we dug it up, brushed it off, and fanned it into flame. The ancients did this routinely and with amazing results. Thus it was said of them that they lived by faith and not by sight.
Faith was their vehicle of perception but it was not the faculty by which they came to understand the nuances of spirit. By faith they perceived the ether or spiritual realm. But they used another faculty to study and interact with that realm—the faculty of spiritual consciousness. Where did they get such a faculty? That was the easy part, since every human being is born with this faculty. What the ancients learned to do (and we largely have not) is to use spiritual consciousness for the purposes it was intended for.
Most of us view our endowment of consciousness erroneously. We confuse it with a function of mind. In other words, we have come to believe that when we are experiencing consciousness we are simply using a part of our mind. One of the reasons for this is that the scientific community has elevated the function of mind above all other functions of the human psyche. It has rendered mind as an all-inclusive biological endowment. Even the body is seen in this light. It is not separate from mind, but is actually a physical aspect of mind. So when we hear about consciousness, most of us immediately associate it with mind. But the ancients delved much more deeply into this matter, and they discovered something very important: Human consciousness is not a function of mind. It is an altogether separate function of the human psyche. Why did they deem this distinction to be so important? For one thing, it meant that the human psyche was much more expansive than previously thought. The theory that all human functions are contained in mind and are therefore biological in nature is a highly limiting one. But the ancients discovered that mind is not the only function operating in the human psyche. Neither is it even the most dominant function of the psyche. It is a biological function that resides in the psyche, as is body. But the human psyche is also home to spiritual consciousness, and this function is eternal and has no limitations. As spirit, it is in no way restricted by biological properties. Therefore according to our created blueprint spiritual consciousness not only resides in the human psyche; it is meant to rule therein.
The scientific community has never acknowledged spirit as extant because it has not been able to perceive spirit with our five biological senses. It has acknowledged consciousness, but only as an aspect of mind. But to the ancients, spirit and consciousness were one. And through faith they not only perceived this function of the human psyche; they also were able to learn a great deal about it. Thus it was the study of consciousness that became their main focus and made them wise beyond our reckoning. For, to know the truth about consciousness in relation to the psychic functions of body and mind is to unlock the entire mystery of human life. It represents the correct reintegration of the human psyche, by which the optimal health and function ability of a human being is achieved.
But the ancients went even further than this. Through their study of consciousness they also discovered the true purpose for why we are here. They saw that not only was consciousness spiritual; it was also evolutionary in nature. This was in harmony with their study of the natural world around them, in which it was found that many of the earth’s created life forms were evolutionary. But the unique quality about man was that man’s evolutionary thrust was not biological; it was spiritual. Man did not evolve from one earthly species into a new one. Only his faculty of spiritual consciousness displayed this propensity. And it was this created endowment of evolving spiritual consciousness that gave man dominion over all other created life forms—not some aspect of biological supremacy. This is what the Bible means when it says that we were created in the image of God. God is fully evolved consciousness. And human beings were created with the evolutionary capacity for becoming like God.
Furthermore, the ancients deduced that consciousness evolution was the true purpose of human life. This was actually an obvious finding for them. For, what purpose could ever compare to becoming like God? But in order for consciousness to evolve it needed time and experience on the earthly plane. And this matter of earthly plane experience was neither obvious nor simple. In fact, it has been shown to be highly complex and enigmatic. That was why the earthly plane environment was created to be a naturally challenging one, presenting us with obstacles, pressures, oppositional forces, and inertia. These experiential elements act like fire to our endowment of consciousness, burning away all resistance to the evolutionary process.
And so we come to find that the complexities of human life are not superfluous after all. They are not just indulgent mind stuff that we cling to in order to make life
more interesting and intriguing. Rather they are the product of our own experiences, as we interact with the challenging aspects of the earthly plane environment. They are purposeful, in that they actually facilitate our evolutionary impulses.
If there were no evolution of consciousness then the scientific view that human life is dominantly biological would be correct, and all of our complexities would, in fact, be indulgent mind stuff. But the ancients knew that consciousness was not only a non-biological endowment; it was the only faculty of our created makeup that is evolutionary. They also recognized that suffering and complexity were elements of earthly plane existence that facilitated man’s evolutionary thrust.
One of the main motives of the scientific community has always been to alleviate and eradicate suffering. And their efforts have not been limited to their teachings. They have branched out into other more tangible methodologies, such as psychological conditioning and medical therapies. In these attempts they wholeheartedly believe that they are performing a great service to humanity. But the ancients knew that to eradicate suffering and do away with complexity would actually be counterproductive to consciousness evolution. It would remove one of the most efficacious influences on our journey toward evolutionary fulfillment.
Due to erroneous counterproductive programs such as these impacting human society, severe restraints have come upon our evolutionary instincts. Collectively, in fact, our entire evolutionary impetus has been derailed. And this is not a new phenomenon. It has been going on since the beginning of the age. Fortunately, this does not hold true for the individual. As individuals, we are still capable of growing spiritually and realizing our ultimate evolutionary fulfillment. This enduring individual capability is the pearl of great price that Jesus spoke of. If it ever gets taken away from us, human life will indeed be altered unrecognizably. Not only will our complexities become a thing of the past, but also spiritual life will become perpetually off-limits to us. Human consciousness will forever after be viewed as a function of mind, thereby rendering its expansive properties null and void. Indeed we will become nothing more than biological automatons.
Jakeb Brock is a spiritual teacher and the author of The New Consciousness: What Our World Needs Most. Visit www.ournewconsciousness.com or www.facebook.com/thenewconsciousness.
By TJ Woodward
Quite possibly, what can seem even more difficult than making peace with others is the prospect of making peace with ourselves. We are burdened with what we have done or not done. And more deeply, many of us are burdened with an identity where we believe we are “wrong” or unlovable. So, it’s not just “I have done something wrong,” but “I am wrong.” That identity can be so deeply entrenched that we’re not even aware that it’s present. This is what makes it seem so hard to make peace with ourselves for things we have done. Part of the challenge in making peace with ourselves is a belief that our goal in life is to resolve our central conflict. We live as if the core conflict of our life story is the main problem keeping us from happiness, so we live as though resolving that core conflict is our life’s purpose.
Underneath many of the recurring themes or patterns in our life stories is an unconscious assumption: If we want to create the life of our dreams, then we need to resolve what we believe is our core conflict, and to do that we need to be self-critical. “If I can just overcome what’s wrong, if I can just fix certain things about myself, then I can change” (be happy, be loved, be successful). The assumption that the key to happiness is to fix things reveals another assumption: that things must be broken. This approach can temporarily work in the external realm—think of all the advances in medicine, for instance, that are based on it. But when it comes to deepening one’s spiritual awareness, this perspective eventually creates not wholeness but more brokenness in our lives.
What if the key to true happiness lies elsewhere? What if things aren’t broken? What if you are essentially perfect and fundamentally whole? How would that shift your entire worldview? If “I am perfect and you are perfect,” then neither of us is worthier than the other. That means you can broaden your awareness by investigating your perspective. No matter how difficult or how idyllic your early life was, it is about training yourself to think, feel, and embody the truth that you are whole and perfect and one with source, then to ask and follow the question “What else is possible here?” We can then also recognize that we don’t need to earn love. Love is who we are.
If you’ve been able to step back and witness your own thoughts and reactions to life and have discovered a pattern of criticism directed inward or outward, you can give a shout of joy. It’s really one minor step from self-criticism to self-compassion and from criticism of others to acceptance of others. If you continue to give yourself room and the silence to witness, to notice, what activates your criticism, I promise you will find the capacity to live beyond your previous stories and lean into what else is there and what else is possible.
Many, if not all of us, grew up with a somewhat damaged sense of self. Childhood hurts, traumas or abuse severely distort our self-image and can interfere with our ability to relate to others in meaningful ways. If this is the case for you, it is important to do the emotional work to heal and resolve whatever parts of your past are still affecting you. On your journey of healing, you can develop unconditional love, acceptance, and compassion for those inner parts where you might still feel wounded. You can be aware of whether you are acting out or demanding that your needs be met by others who may not be capable of or willing to meet them. Loving the seemingly wounded parts of yourself is a vital step in having deeply connected and purposeful relationships with yourself and with others.
However, as we fully know ourselves to be love, we recognize there is actually no separate self to love. The very idea of loving oneself suggests duality, where in fact there is only oneness. Self-love implies that we are separate from the source of love, rather than an expression of it. From the highest level of truth, the greatest act of self-love is to truly know who and what we are. Love is the truth of who we are. When we truly know this, everything changes. Can it be that simple? I say yes!
TJ Woodward is a revolutionary recovery expert, inspirational speaker, educator, addiction treatment specialist, and author of Conscious Recovery.
By Jakeb Brock
Traditionally in the East, when an individual felt and responded to a spiritual calling, he or she became a disciple of a master or guru and dedicated him or herself wholeheartedly to a spiritual practice. He or she totally withdrew from the world and gave up all their worldly possessions. They lived only for their spiritual practice from that time forward.
But times have changed, and the world has changed. The East has become largely westernized, and here in the West we have finally opened the door to eastern thought and spiritual practice. Thus in our day we have witnessed a blending of East and West that is unparalleled and long overdue. On a practical level western governing and economic systems have been embraced in the East based on their freedom and durability, while simultaneously many western spiritual aspirants have come to recognize the great value inherent the ancient eastern spiritual practices. But unlike the traditional eastern approach of total dedication, most westerners have adopted their own version of eastern practice—one that fits better with their prevailing western lifestyle. In other words, instead of total dedication most westerners attempt to fit their spiritual practice in with their existing lifestyle and thereby have the best of both worlds.
There is only one problem with this modern western spiritual approach. Most of us tend to be so busy working jobs and raising families that our spiritual practice sometimes gets shuffled to the back burner and neglected. Our schedules are literally packed full with obligations, duties, and social involvements—all of which seem inviolably prioritized. We have all been taught the great virtue of being responsible with our time and taking care of ourselves, and therefore spiritual practice takes on the quality of a secondary, even indulgent pursuit. We deem it valuable and beneficial, but finding the time and energy to pursue it and still be a responsible adult can be a little tricky.
But for many in the East spiritual practice has always been considered a number one priority. And culturally speaking, this has also been viewed as a perfectly legitimate and responsible life choice. In the East spiritual practice is a way of life, while in the West it tends to be more like a hobby. In the East spiritual practice is meant to, and often does, alter one’s worldview, while in the West it is meant only to impart side benefits to us, such as peace of mind, health of body, etc. Here in the West our approach is to stay in control and relegate our spiritual practice to its appropriate niche in our lives, while in the East it is not uncommon for a spiritual aspirant to give up all control and let their practice dictate their priorities.
Interestingly, the ancient eastern mystics who founded the science of yoga seemed to have foreseen the world developments and cultural influences of our day. Thus the spiritual practice they advocated and codified included many practical elements—elements that allow one to practice without a total commitment of time and energy. As yoga unfolded, it became like a magnificent tree—one with many varied and fruitful branches. These branches allowed the yogi to hone in on a particular path that best suited them and to work with his or her human attributes rather than repress them. The practitioner was taught to use his or her body, breath, and voice in the service of intensive spiritual practice. And in this way one could actually learn to live in a meditative state at all times.
This idea may seem a little farfetched and lofty to us here in the West with our busy lifestyles and myriad of distractions. But the eastern mystics knew better. They saw meditation as being not so much a technique as a state of consciousness. In other words, in order to enter the meditative state one did not need to sit a certain way or recite a certain mantra; one only needed to be focused and aware to such a degree that one’s mind was stilled and transported into the spiritual realm. And amazingly, they discovered that such focus and awareness could be achieved through many diverse means—means that applied primarily to the human body.
In our western Judeo-Christian culture the human body has gotten a pretty bad rap. It has been looked upon as the foremost vehicle of temptation and sin. According to this view spirit and body are not only incompatible; they are, in fact, two dualistic extremes, with spirit being good and body being evil. But the founders of yoga saw things in an entirely different light. Instead of condemning the body they put forth a prominent branch called Hatha Yoga—a branch that specifically uses the body to focus consciousness. Their vision was essentially one of meditation through movement.
How does meditation through movement work? Whenever our bodies move, a physical sensation is created—one which then sends a signal to our mind and is treated with varying degrees of awareness. In other words, some movements that register in our mind are overlooked as insignificant and thereby remain unconscious, while others are too strong to ignore. That is why Hatha Yoga involves stretches that can be both difficult and intensive. The idea is that the sensations from those stretches would be too strong to ignore. Moreover, if they are too strong to ignore, then our awareness will rise up and take front stage, thereby causing our mind to be relegated to its rightful place in our psyche. This is what makes the mind slow down and become quiet.
Many of us here in the West have missed this intended goal of Hatha Yoga. Instead of valuing its meditative properties we have taken up this yogic branch strictly as a form of physical exercise. But to the eastern mystics physical exercise was far down on their list of intended benefits. Rather to them meditation was not only the key to this spiritual practice; it was the key to all spiritual practice. Therefore every branch of yoga was actually meant to lead us into the meditative state.
When looked at in this light it is logical to assume that other physical activities could also become vehicles that lead us into the meditative state. Yoga asanas may be specifically tailored for this purpose, but essentially any movement of our body can achieve the same result. How can this be? Because the key to entering the meditative state is the rising up of our conscious awareness and the relegating of mind to its rightful place. Thus movements that we normally do not associate with meditation can cause this same dynamic to be released. The key is to become acutely aware of the sensations that a movement produces and thereby allow our consciousness to take command of our psyche. This will, in turn, strengthen our conscious awareness and free us up to be able to practice meditation at any time and in any situation wherein our physical body moves.
Of course, for those of us who are not yet spiritual masters, some movements will be more effective than others for achieving this. Hatha yoga will in all likelihood continue to be our most effective form of meditation through movement, but as our conscious awareness deepens, we may find other forms of movement work well also. The following are a few examples.
Another branch of yoga called Pranayama is a highly effective form of meditation through movement. It focuses primarily on the breath. But again, many practice Pranayama without fully understanding its potential benefits. For not only does working with our breath bring increased blood flow and a biological change in our oxygen levels, it also is an effective practice for focusing our conscious awareness. The reason for this is that, like Hatha Yoga, it is a repetitive physical movement that registers sensations in our mind.
Another wonderful but sometimes overlooked form of meditation through movement is interpretive dance—that is, the creative movement of our body in response to musical sounds and rhythms. Again, the same principle holds true here. When dancing, instead of abandoning yourself to the unconscious effect that music has on your body, try to become intently conscious of the sensations that the movements of dance bring. This can be a very life-affirming and liberating pursuit, especially for us here in the West that have bought into the lie that the body is sinful and needs to be repressed. In dance, the body finds a powerful healing release from the kind of repressive wrong thinking that can lead to sickness, lameness, and even death.
The martial art Tai Chi is another excellent form of meditation through movement. Though it uses no outside stimulus such as music to infuse the body with movement and sensation, Tai Chi has its own source of bodily impetus: the Chi. This is the silent flow of creative life energy that pulsates throughout our universe at all times. So in order to practice Tai Chi one not only needs to employ conscious awareness of the movements and sensations it produces; they also need to be a very good listener. For the Chi is all around us but like the wind, it is completely silent.
What is the one common thread that connects all of these divergent activities? They each use the physical body to achieve a meditative state. This is a very interesting phenomenon, given that we here in the West were taught that our body could not possibly be used for a spiritual purpose. Clearly, the ancient eastern masters saw things differently. They saw that the body was not only a very effective spiritual vehicle; it was for us human beings one of our greatest gifts. That is why we were created with physical bodies. Everything in creation is meant to serve and facilitate consciousness evolution and expansion, and the human body is no exception to this rule. If we did not have bodies, an entire world of movement and sensation would be lost to us. We also would have no breath and no voice.
Of course, the body also has its rightful place in our psyche, and the wrongful elevation of it is what leads to temptation and sin. Thus when practicing meditation through movement we must always relegate both body and mind in submission to consciousness.
The great spiritual masters were not concerned with the body or the mind. They were concerned foremost with the human faculty of spiritual consciousness. For, it is this faculty that sets us apart from every other creature in the known universe. Many other creatures have bodies and minds, but we alone have spiritual consciousness.
Meditation is all about consciousness expansion and elevation. Therefore every spiritual practice has meditation as both its foundation and goal, and every facet of human life can be a meditation when the expansion of consciousness is involved. This is how we transform our raw animalistic humanness into an eternal vessel of spiritual light. It is also how mankind will become the ultimate force that ushers in a New Age for our planet. In that day the human body will be seen as one of our greatest assets and friends. For it will then be recognized that the body was given to us for the foremost purpose of facilitating our consciousness evolution.
Jakeb Brock is a spiritual teacher and the author of The New Consciousness: What Our World Needs Most. Visit www.ournewconsciousness.com or www.facebook.com/thenewconsciousness.
By Jakeb Brock
Here in the West where science has become like the voice of God, we have come to view human life as essentially random and accidental, with the basis for this view being the Big Bang theory of our universe’s origins. Beginning with that one great accident, all life that has followed cannot be other than accidental as well, including human life. And with this scientific assessment being widely accepted as truth, the tonal quality of our western culture has become largely hedonistic and purposeless.
Also according to this view, each one of us is born into this world as the result of random biological impulses belonging to the natural propagation of our species. Then despite this accidental birth, after we reach a certain point of maturity we are expected to make important life choices, as if our life was purposeful after all. This is a conflicting message that has caused more than a few to scratch their head and wonder what is going on in our world.
Another way to say this is that even though the scientific view of life is that it has no real rhyme or reason, we can choose to live as if it mattered. We can inject meaning into our lives through our own individual belief system, and no one will stop us from doing this. They might try to correct us and remind us of the scientific reality, but in most cases we will be free to take this more serious approach, if we want to. That is why in our society people run the gamut from those who think the only purpose in life is to enjoy the ride and have a good time to those who take themselves so seriously that they have forgotten how to do that.
Those who tend to be more serious can inject meaning into their lives simply by ascribing inordinate value to some of the aspects of human life that others take for granted. For example, they might ascribe ultimate value to relationships or career, or some might take the same route with philosophy or religion. In this way they attempt to defy the scientific mandate of randomness and fill their own lives with meaning and purpose. The problem is that none of these pursuits has any real meaning on its own. Rather the meaning must come from us—that is, our feelings and beliefs. In other words, if we want our lives to have meaning, we have to be the ones to make it happen.
This has led to an interesting social dynamic in our society—that of experimentation. Perhaps we are the type of person who wants to believe that life has meaning but we have yet to find out what that meaning is. We have not found meaning in any of the pursuits that others swear by. So we decide to make this a matter of our own personal quest. We try this and that, and through the process of elimination we have the sense that we are making progress towards our goal. At least we come to know that it is “not this” and “not that.” Again, no one is going to stop us from taking this route. In our society we are pretty much free to live the way we want, as long as it is lawful. Unfortunately, our freedom to experiment does not always bear fruit in finding.
This then leads to another social phenomenon: the perpetual seeker—one who is always trying this and that, but never finding. Some perpetual seekers even lose sight of what it is they are looking for. They become so attached to their seeking that they begin to view it as part of their identity. They become intoxicated with their freedom to experiment and forget all about meaning and purpose. In essence, they end up following the cultural piper anyway, as if they knew all along that science’s take on things was beyond challenging. But for these the fact that they have spent much time and energy seeking and not finding can bring an undercurrent of disillusionment and even despair into their lives. Why? Because they sincerely wanted to find a greater truth than science’s teaching of randomness. They really wanted life to be meaningful, and this desire was pure. In this way life in the western world has not only become aimless and frivolous; for some it has also become empty and cruel.
Of course, our scientists are not cruel people. It was never their intention to cause anyone disillusionment and despair. They are simply committed to finding the truth, and if their findings bring suffering to people it cannot be helped. The truth cannot be sacrificed or sidestepped in order to feed people’s illusions. In the long run adhering to the truth will make human beings stronger and increase their potential for greatness.
But the question must then be asked: Would the truth, the real truth, bring disillusionment and despair to the human ranks, even if only for the short term? That is not at all what the spiritual masters taught. In one accord they taught that instead of the truth being hard to swallow it would be a healing balm. It would set men free. It would not treat people’s instinctual desire to find meaning and purpose in life with disdain; on the contrary it would fill them with hope and vitality. No, the spiritual masters would not agree with the scientific teaching of Big Bang randomness, not only because it brings suffering but also because it is not really the truth at all. They had their own take on the truth pertaining to these matters, and that truth is as old as the hills themselves. But it is not easy for us to learn and embrace this spiritual truth in a world in which science’s view has become inviolable. It is there for the finding, but it takes a courageous soul to do so.
This truth teaching of the masters first appeared in the East approximately five thousand years ago. It takes the stance that human life is more than just a random biological happening; it is the outworking of the evolution of spiritual consciousness. In other words, we are each born into this world because our individual endowment of spiritual consciousness is in the process of evolving towards its ultimate fruition, and we need time and experience on the earthly plane, in order for that to happen. Furthermore, we are all at different stages of this evolutionary process when we are born into a particular life incarnation. These divergent stages of consciousness are known in the East as karma. And because each one of us is here to work out our karma on this plane with no guarantee that we will reach fruition in any given lifetime, most of us must be born repeatedly.
Then approximately four thousand years ago this teaching became known in what was then considered to be the West—in the Mediterranean region called the Land of Canaan. And the book that we call the Bible is actually the story of how this truth teaching from the East first became known to one man named Abraham and was then passed down to an entire nation of his descendants—a people known as the Hebrews. But not surprisingly, these early Hebrews felt impressed to guard the teaching and veil it in secrecy. Thus the writings in the Bible make no reference to their original source. For those with eyes to see, however, it soon became clear that this was, in fact, the same teaching of the masters from the East, only with a western slant and emphasis. It was the teaching about the evolution of consciousness being our true purpose for being here.
Two thousand years following Abraham’s breakthrough of consciousness Jesus happened on the scene. He was a direct descendant of the first Hebrews, so his highly evolved state of consciousness was explainable even on a human basis. But there was more to Jesus than just his ancestral link. In truth, he differed from any of the Hebrews that had lived before him. And that difference was due to his state of consciousness. As it turned out, Jesus was probably the first man ever born in the West who was already karmically fulfilled. In other words, he was already fully evolved in his spiritual consciousness. And that meant that he was here for an altogether different purpose than we are. He was not here to work out karma; he was here to teach and spread the great teaching from the East into all the western world—no more secrecy or guardedness, only the real truth about who we human beings are and what we are here for.
Jesus was fully aware of who he was and the fact that he was set apart from other men. He also was empowered to perform many miraculous signs and wonders. So it was that this western version of the teaching came forth with an emphasis greater than words alone could have achieved. This was necessary because of the hardened spiritual condition of most westerners at that time and since—a hardness due to our vain materialistic orientation toward life.
And so through Jesus this great teaching from the East has indeed gone out into every corner and crevice of our global community. Unfortunately, even with such an elite heritage most people have failed to recognize or understand the true nature of the teaching. Those who have ruled over western civilization have twisted and perverted the teaching’s true essence, embellishing it with all manner of superstitious and pagan ideas. This has resulted in a watering down and diluting of the teaching’s power, thereby creating a vacuum in the influential circles of society—one that then facilitated science’s rise to prominence in our midst.
Fortunately, this collective mishandling has not affected an individual’s ability to discover and lay hold of the teaching. And it is for this reason that ever since Jesus’ day those born into the western world have no longer been doomed to a life of purposelessness and materialistic futility. It may take effort and courage for us to find this pearl of great price, but it can and often has been done.
This is the truth that Jesus said would not only lend true purpose to our lives; it would set us free—the truth about the evolution of consciousness. It is the only truth that gives meaning to the human experience.
All human beings have spiritual consciousness. That is how we were created, and that is why we are set apart from all other earthly life forms. But this endowment of consciousness is not static and lifeless. On our karmic journey it may begin as small as a mustard seed. But when it is fully evolved it becomes like a great and mighty life-giving tree. It becomes like a bright star shining in a dark night.
Here in the West we have been given a great example of what consciousness looks like when it is fully evolved. All we have to do is turn our gaze onto Jesus. Even as he proclaimed, he was the light of the world. Why? Because his consciousness, being fully evolved, literally shined forth like the sun. This is no secret. That is why the fully evolved state of consciousness is now often referred to as Christ consciousness.
But whether in the East or the West, the fully evolved state of consciousness is the same. It is the same for all human beings. And in all cases its fullness is one of light and ultimate goodness—that which we call enlightenment.
It is this ultimate evolutionary potential of our spiritual consciousness that makes us like God. This is because a fully evolved human consciousness essentially merges into God. This is why Jesus could say that those who saw him saw God. He also said, “I and the Father are one.” (John 10:30). Contrary to what some have believed, this is not a blasphemous statement. It is the truth for all of us, once we have finished the karmic journey and experienced the full evolution of consciousness.
Jakeb Brock is a spiritual teacher and the author of The New Consciousness: What Our World Needs Most. Visit www.ournewconsciousness.com or www.facebook.com/thenewconsciousness.
By Jakeb Brock
One of the true constants of human life is feeling the sensation that we call pain. Every human being has known pain at times—male and female, rich or poor, East and West, black and white, etc. And since pain is a sensation that most of us do not consider pleasant, one of our most commonly shared instincts has been to devise strategies for managing and eradicating it.
We feel pain when we are young, but our natural strength and busy active lives divert our attention to the degree that it is usually tolerable. Thus we have in the professional sports world the phenomenon of “playing with pain.” When we get older, however, this becomes more difficult to do. When we get older, many of us find ourselves playing with pain everyday, with no end or relief in sight.
The most common form of pain seems to have its source in bodily injury, dysfunction, or disease. It occurs when some facet of the body’s optimal functioning becomes upended. This assault on optimal bodily function ability can range in seriousness from cuts and bruises to terminal illnesses, and it can come from a veritable host of instigators and circumstances. But always it is the body that seems to be the source of our painful sensations. It is for this reason that people who experience pain on a regular basis tend to have a rather negative opinion of their body. They see their body as being more of an enemy than a friend, a hindrance instead of a facilitator. And the unfortunate thing is that in our day bodily pain has become so common and widespread that there is now probably a majority of people worldwide who view their bodies this way.
This ubiquitous attitude of resentment toward the body is one of the main impetuses behind our modern approach to medical treatment. It has become a culturally engrained belief of the collective that the human body tends to be problematic, especially when it comes to causing us pain. Therefore from our childhood onward we are encouraged to “link up” with our local healthcare providers by submitting to regular checkups, testing, screening, etc. The unspoken idea here is that the human body will invariably end up causing you pain at some point, but through these preventative measures the doctors can see that point coming from a distance and take the necessary steps to try to fend it off.
This being said, as we embark upon the spiritual path, many of us find ourselves inclined to question this collective attitude about the body, as if something about it no longer rings true. It is not that we deny the problem of pain, but blaming our body and viewing it in a negative light seems somehow counterproductive. The more we learn about the true nature of the created universe, the less sense it makes that the body would be so persistently and intentionally antagonistic. We begin to get glimpses of the perfection of the created universe and must then reconcile the cultural idea that the human body is an exception to this rule.
But dare we question this, when even medical science has gotten behind and promoted this attitude? Yes, we dare. Why? Because there is more at stake here than just grappling with the sensation of pain. There is the broader truth that human culture not only perpetuates counterproductive ideas about the body; it does so about many other aspects of our lives. On the spiritual path we begin to learn truth from God’s perspective, and unfortunately this brings us into conflict with many of the beliefs issuing forth from man’s culture. But it is no easy task to recognize and root out long held cultural beliefs and attitudes, as many of us have found out. And sometimes we have to be hit over the head with the truth before we can let go of a certain cultural myth as being false.
One such truth is proclaimed in the opening pages of the Bible, when it states that God created man in his own image and likeness. From this it follows that man was created in and as the perfection of being—an overall state of being that most certainly includes our physical bodies. So how can our body be our enemy? How can it be thought of as a persistent troublemaker? How do we resolve this conflict? We have to be willing to see things God’s way. That is all. We have to, as the Bible also says, “Let God be true and every man a liar.” (Romans 3:4). This is a very radical approach, but at some point our own spiritual growth compels us to try it.
So let us apply this truth that God created us in his own image to the problem of pain and see where it leads us. Based on our cultural conditioning we have probably adopted the subconscious belief that the human body is a perpetual troublemaker, if for no other reason than it has at times caused us to have to endure the unpleasantness of pain. But there is probably another erroneous subconscious belief about the body that we have also adopted—that being that the body is more powerful than it really is.
There is no denying that pain can be an all-consuming element in our lives. It can consume our senses, our thoughts, our emotions, our time, our money, etc. And this quality gives it a kind of power in our sight. Then since we associate pain with our body we also end up viewing the body as a power. We see the doctors doing all they can to try to subdue this powerful enemy of ours and make it friendlier. But all of this is based on the misperception about where pain actually comes from.
What is the human body? It is an organic biological organism—one that functions involuntarily according to its created mandate. This involuntary functioning is
nothing short of amazing in all of its detail and chemical interaction. But this does not imply that the body has an intelligence and will of its own. The only intelligence it has is its involuntary function ability. Furthermore, the only willful intelligence inherent in any of our biological workings is the intelligence of mind. The problem is that mind, being closely connected to the body, tends to blur the boundaries between them. In other words, mind projects willful intelligence onto the body, and this causes us to believe that the body is more powerful than it actually is. It also has no qualms about letting body be the fall guy when it comes to the problem of pain.
But if the body has no intelligence of its own, it cannot very well be the source of what we call pain. True, the body may be impacted by injury, dysfunction, and disease, but it cannot be conscious of pain. That takes intelligence, and intelligence comes only from mind.
Pain is a sensation, and all human sensations are filtered through and interpreted by the mind in order for them to be consciously felt. For example, when I touch the hot stove burner with my finger, the only reason I feel pain is that my mind immediately processes that sensation and deduces that it should be painful. It does this with pleasurable sensations as well, only in those cases it makes the deduction that they should bring us pleasure. But the body knows nothing about any of this. It just is. If it weren’t for the mind interpreting a sensation as painful, the body would simply continue functioning involuntarily, like a chicken with its head cut off.
Another way to say this is that pain is not a physical sensation; it is a mental deduction or belief. And all such beliefs are subjective in the eye of the beholder. They are also shaped by social and cultural conditioning. Therefore the only way for us to effectively deal with the problem of pain is not through the body; it is through the mind.
Filtering and interpreting sensual messaging is one of the human mind’s foremost functions. It is occupied in this pursuit nearly non-stop, since some form of sensual input takes place just about every waking second of our lives. But the human mind, as it is at present, also specializes in making judgments. That is why it not only filters sensual input; it also interprets it as good or evil, pleasurable or painful, harmful or innocuous, etc. And there can be little doubt that this function of judging or interpreting sensual data has been greatly impacted by our social-cultural conditioning. This is where most of our judgments about good and bad, right and wrong, etc., come from. They are not really our own thought-out deductions. Rather we were taught such things before we were even able to think for ourselves.
As we all know, mind interprets bodily pain as an unpleasant sensation. But it also judges pain as evil, problematic, inconvenient, perhaps expensive, potentially life threatening, etc. Thus it not only defines pain; it also dredges up in us a host of fears and forebodings and sets in motion strategies for alleviating it, such as taking medication, going to the doctor, etc. In this way mind actually tends to complicate and exacerbate the problem of pain. And it is this complex conditioned mental response that can make the sensation of pain unbearable.
Consider a plant. Many problems can beset a plant. It can get a disease, be wilted by extreme heat, be assailed by frost and ice, etc. It can be eaten up by pests and varmints. And sometimes these assaults can be life threatening. But plants experience neither pain nor fear. Why? Because plants do not have minds, and only creatures with minds are capable of such responses. Science has shown us that only mind is capable of interpreting and filtering sensual input. It has also made the case that our species has the most highly developed mind of all the species on earth. Therefore our minds not only process more sensual input than any other life form; they also feel pain more intensely. But like a plant, our bodies feel nothing.
We have all heard the expression “mind over matter,” but mind cannot stop pain. No amount of mental willpower can avail in this case. Why is this? Because mind is the source of pain. It functions as the interpreter of all sensual input. Therefore it cannot heal that which it perpetuates. There is only one way to alleviate pain without taking drugs or submitting to invasive medical procedures. And that way is to learn to control and harness mind for our own purposes. It is to reprogram mind to interpret pain in a different light. But who or what is it inside of us that can do such a thing? Most of us identify ourselves with mind. And logically speaking, mind cannot reprogram mind. But through spiritual practice we come to not only identify with a deeper part of our being; we also become capable of controlling and reprogramming our minds.
The more we develop our spiritual consciousness, the greater authority we have to be able to control our mind. And the greater control we gain over our mind, the more capable we become of impacting the way we process and interpret sensual data. In other words, once we have gained a degree of mastery over our mind we can actually choosehow we want to interpret a certain sensual message. We are no longer compelled to react according to subconscious conditioned reflexes. Thus we have the power to disarm pain.
This explains the phenomenon of Eastern yogis and mystics being able to walk on fiery coals or sit and meditate outdoors in freezing weather without feeling any pain or discomfort. They are able to do such things through their mastery over mind and their ability to choose how to react to the sensual messaging of the body. The fiery coals may burn the skin on their feet, but they feel no pain. The freezing weather might take their breath away, but they do not feel cold. Why? Because their spiritual consciousness overrides their mind and disengages the kind of sensual processing that we have all come to believe is normal and inviolable. They have learned the truth about what pain really is and where it comes from and through this unmasking have proceeded to gain mastery over it.
Jakeb Brock is a spiritual teacher and the author of The New Consciousness: What Our World Needs Most. Visit www.ournewconsciousness.com or www.facebook.com/thenewconsciousness.
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A Channeling Session with Judith Monahan Our publisher, Kasia Szumal, recently had a channeling session with Judith Monahan regarding the current COVID-19 pandemic. Below is the video of that session. Click on the times to be taken to the specific questions/topics. In this session, Judith shares an enlightening perspective and encouragement to us all during …
By Alberto Villoldo, Ph.D. For millennia, secret societies of Native American medicine men and women carefully guarded their wisdom teachings. These shamans, also known as Earthkeepers, existed in many nations and were called by different names. In the Andes and the Amazon, they were known as the Laika. In 1950, a group of Laika from …
By Jakeb Brock In attempting to delineate some of the causes that impede spiritual progress, we tend to blame two of our prominent created human attributes, our body and our mind. To some degree, this makes sense, since the human body can certainly be a source of distraction, embarrassment and pain; while the mind is …
By Patricia McNeilly Have you heard of terms such as soul mate, or twin flame? In my first of several articles, I hope to help you understand and feel more comfortable with these subjects. “Twin flame” is the common term for what is the true other half of a person’s soul. It’s not just a …
By Jaap van Etten One of my interests is the study of the use of the Earth energies by different civilizations and traditions over time. These studies led me to the subject of landscape temples. It is a fascinating subject that helped me to see how people, both in the past and the present, recognize …
By Dr. Matthew B. James “Ability is what you’re capable of doing. Motivation determines what you do. Attitude determines how well you do it.” – Lou Holtz Enthusiasm. Inspiration. Passion. Motivation. Excitement. Just reading those words, don’t you feel a little more energy in your body and mind? And, if you think about their opposite—boredom, cynicism, …
By Romina Vintila When it comes to our health and our body image, many factors come into play. We look at commercials, we are bombarded with social media posts on what it is to be beautiful, what standards we must uphold, from television to magazines, it is everywhere. But what does it all have in …
By Dave Capraro — In 1955, Dr. George King (1919 – 1997), a medium and yoga master, began publicly channeling messages from sources claiming to be extraterrestrial and millions of years ahead of us in spirituality and science. Besides their interest in our well-being, their messages have since been substantiated in different ways. In the …
By Ajahn Brahm To live happily is to live in peace, with acceptance, with love—not with love as in how you love a person, but how you love life. You might not always get along with your loved ones, you might argue or quibble with them, but you love them nonetheless. Similarly, life might give …
By Walter Perschke Perhaps the greatest mystery of Christianity and the entire world is the story of the crucifixion and resurrection of the man called Jesus. Did it really happen? Did it happen the way the story is told today in the Christian gospels? And, just as importantly, why did it happen? How could the …
By Blair McKissock, MSEd, RYT Over the past few years, it has become very clear that people in the horse world are moving into distinct groups, those that do it the “old way,” and those that do it the “new way.” Those who grew up in the horse world in the not too distant past …
by Janae Jean and Spencer Schluter This month, we had the privilege to speak with Susan Wisehart, M.S., LMFT. Susan is a holistic psychotherapist and author of the book, Soul Visioning: Clear the Past, Create Your Future. She has trained with psychiatrist Brian Weiss, M.D. and with Jungian analyst, Roger Woolger Ph.D. She also is …
By Ellen Grace O’Brian – We can easily verify that the search for happiness is a fundamental motivation underlying all that we do. From the moment we get up in the morning, we are on a quest to avoid suffering and gather as much happiness as possible—from mundane desires to satisfy hunger or thirst to our …
By Jennifer Longmore – Each year, we arrive at this place—the transition between one chapter and the next—the void of possibility and reflection. The space that is created for us to tune in to what we want to create, what we want to create more of, and what we want to release, all in the …
By Samantha Wood, RN – According to Elizabeth Clare Prophet in her book, Saint Germain: Master Alchemist Spiritual Teachings from An Ascended Master, The Violet Flame is a spiritual energy that has been gifted to humanity by St. Germain to support our ascension, promote clarity in decision making, banish anxiety and help dissolve acquired karmic debt. …
By Carolyn M. Greenleaf As the end of each year approaches, we find ourselves reassessing our paths, and often, the totality of our lives. During this review, a natural transformation takes place; one that is both painful and beautiful. This transformation is instigated by many things—both seen and unseen. I speak of a constant cycle—an …
By Shakti Gawain – Your spiritual source is the supply of infinite love, wisdom, and energy in the universe. For you, source may mean God, Goddess, universal intelligence, the Great Spirit, the higher power, or your true essence. However we conceptualize it, it can be found here and now within each of us, in our …
By Georgia Jones I was talking with a client the other day who was describing some harsh thoughts that were plaguing her, thoughts like “I’m horribly ugly;” “No one will ever love me;” or “I messed up again, I’ll never amount to anything.” Even just listening to her say these out loud made me feel …
By Jackie Lapin – John E. Fetzer found as much joy in his quest for spiritual enrichment as he did in the wealth he acquired building a financial empire that ultimately made him the sole owner of the Detroit Tigers from 1961 to 1983 and put him on Forbes Magazine’s list of 400 richest Americans. He maintained …
By Susanna Mittermaier An alarming new study shows perfectionism is on the rise, a condition linked to depression, anxiety, eating disorders, early morbidity and even suicide. Broadly defined, perfectionism is a combination of excessively high personal standards and overly critical self-evaluations. Perfectionism is often fueled by cultural expectations and conditioning, involves a harsh inner critic, …
By Jakeb Brock Jesus once told his disciples, “In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world,” (John 16:33) For students of spiritual truth there are two important points to consider about Jesus’ choice of words. The first is what he meant by the word trouble, and the second …
by Endre Balogh – Our natural world is filled with a myriad of geometric designs. We can see examples of this in the simplest of flowers and shells, as well as in the geometry comprising the tiniest atoms, or farthest galaxies. These patterns repeat in endless permutations everywhere, yet how do they arise? Are they …
By Lee Carroll – This live channeling was given in San Jose, California on January 14, 2017. Greetings, dear ones, I am Kryon of Magnetic Service. Many times, during these channelings, we sense appropriate times to bring you profound information. This is to bring you things that Humans need to know. Today is a bit …
This live channeling was given in Big Sky, Montana June 4, 2017 To help the reader, this channeling has been revisited [by Lee and Kryon] to provide even clearer understanding. Sometimes information is even added or condensed. Often what happens live has implied energy within it, which carries a kind of communication that the printed …
Interview By Janae Jean and Spencer Schluter – For this mid-month interview, we had the pleasure of speaking with Elizabeth Mattis Namgyel. Elizabeth is a Buddhist teacher and author of The Logic of Faith: The Buddhist Path to Finding Certainty Beyond Belief and Doubt and The Power of An Open Question: The Buddha’s Path to Freedom. …
By Michael Peter Langevin – It has been said that there are two phases of life; one when you are busy living and the other when you realize you only have one life to live! Many of us realize life is short, and we want the rest of it from that moment forward to be …
Interview By Janae Jean and Spencer Schluter – Our latest podcast guest is Gary Jansen, director of Image Books and executive editor at Penguin Random House, where he has edited and published books by noted writers including Pope Benedict XVI, Pope Francis, Deepak Chopra and Greg Kincaid. He has authored several books, lectured extensively and …
By Beverly Rubik, Ph.D. – How can we direct our intentions to make a nourishing change—to help sick animals or persons, or improve agricultural crop yields? Our minds are very powerful, but most of us are not using our full capabilities to manifest positive effects in the world. The United States Psychotronics Association (USPA) is …
By Vijay Eswaran – Eleanor Roosevelt once said, “Do one thing every day that scares you.” We all have fear. None of us are so lucky to be entirely immune to it. Some choose to be consumed by their fears, while others choose to embrace them, befriend them and harness them to fuel their dreams. The …
Interview by Spencer Schluter & Janae Jean – This episode, we had the pleasure of speaking with noted thinker and writer, Ken Wilber. Ken is the founder of Integral Institute, a think tank for studying Integral Theory and Practice. Ken is the author of more than twenty books including The Brief History of Everything. …
By Chris Alexandria – As winter continues its laced frosted glass and snowfall dance, dreams of spring begin to emerge. Dreams leading to frolicking towards rebirth and renewal. Isn’t that what spring represents? Rebirth, Renewal and Transformation? Just as a flower can push through the frozen tundra at the first sign of warmth, so can …
Editor’s Note: We had the pleasure of interviewing Corinne Zupko for the Conscious Community Podcast, you can read the article from our March 2018 issue and listen to the podcast here. – J.J. By Corinne Zupko – We hold many false perceptions in our mind. These false perceptions are purposeful blocks to our peace of …