Illusions

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Chakra Removal – What The…..?

It is barely two weeks since my query about the need for work on helping to build a broader awareness of our energy body anatomy when along comes this notion out on the interwebs that muddies the waters on understanding how our energy works.  This level of distortion and misinformation needs to be carefully pointed out and understood for what it is.  The idea that is being floated is that you can remove your chakras.

Right.  Think on that one for a bit.

While I can catch why the people who are putting this forward are doing it, they are misunderstanding or mis-perceiving what is actually going on.  It is interesting to see how we can turn a phenomenon on its head just a tiny bit and wind up with rather significant distortions.

But before I dig into what is happening, let me first explain that removing a chakra is nearly exactly the same thing as trying to remove a current in water, or taking the cycling or vibration away from any form of energy.  Right. A current can be moved  so that it is amazingly calm so that there is little turbulence within it.  However, there still remains a vibration there.  it becomes finer and finer, but all energy is movement.  So far, this has never been seen in any way to NOT be true when it comes to energy,  ANY energy.

You see, all energy exists in frequency, all of it from subatomic particles, atoms, compounds, light, microwaves,  and thought energy. We are ourselves channels for a life force energy called Qi, Chi, Prana, etc., Our own thoughts and feelings serve to attenuate this energy from its universal field form, and will broaden, limit, or allow for it depending on the mind and heart of the person channeling that energy (which is everything and everyone who is alive on the planet).

We are in some aspects here to realize who and what we are.  Part of this is understanding what being a conduit for this energy is about.  Opening up to this flow of energy that is prana and that is awakening brings awareness to who we are as multidimensional beings, as higher selves.  The “work” of Awakening is in how well we allow this force to do the work for us, to inhabit us clearly and cleanly without distortive elements in the mix. The effort is in realizing who we are, and this “who” happens to so often result in a being that is not in conflict with anything, but sees things as they are. It turns out that this is often what takes place with yogis, yoginis, priests, priestesses, monks, shaman, etc.  The Lakota say “Make me a hollow bone” when seeking to be the best healer that they can be.  There is this journey that takes place with most people once they find this awakening and what it does….which quickly, sometimes slowly, clearing you out of the dross that has been carried over from the past.  This is the work of Ho’oponopo, which means “setting it right” which is what we consider to be closer to our state of origin, the primal state, the authentic self or being.

The idea that we remove anything except blockages is denying the energetic reality of our souls being in flesh.

So the idea here that is circulating around lately is that a chakra can be removed.  In the sites that are talking about this as a real thing, they are mistaking the removal of blocked energy as the removal of the chakra. Blocked energy in awareness is what serves to attenuate energy so that it becomes turbulent.  This is what most people feel in the beginning of awakening as the intense energetic effects of kundalini.  It is more correct that this turbulence or intensity is the direct result of having dirt accumulated along the interior of a pipe or garden hose such that it causes a “drag” on the energy and makes everything much more noticeable in awareness. But turbulence is not peace.  It helps, then, to know a little energy101.

A chakra is a vortex of energy that is created as a result of an accumulating flow of many lines of force that run through the body as both an electrical and pranic charge (electric the body produces, prana is created as a subtle finer form of energy that the body also uses as well as consciousness). These channels are called meridians in the Chinese system and nadi in the Hindu.  Most people are used to thinking we have seven chakras.  We in fact have many more than just the seven.  We know about the main seven larger ones because these are the most obvious to feel. These run up along the central trunk of the body, But chakras are merely interaction points within the energy body and these points can accumulate suppressed emotional material. Thus we have the concept of “chakra clearing.” But a chakra itself is without real substance.  It is formed as a result of the flow of energy in the field.  While the meridians or nadi show very real structure, this is energetic.

When I awakened I was shown a whole series of things that I had not realized before awakening.  Most of them I have found have been confirmed on various information sites such as Wikipedia, the Veda’s and Upanishads.  The flow of energy I was shown by the intelligence that is this energy is that the chakras are themselves what happens between the two currents that run up the Ida and Pengala channels, what are called the male and female currents. As the energy runs up along the spine the energy changes pitch or vibration.  As this pitch changes, there is a feedback that happens between the negative and positive poles on each side of the spine. The chakras will become more active when there are varying flows of energy from one side to the other.  This can create the vortex effect.  The chakra will “turn” or there will be more “movement” as a result of a more even flow between the two sides of the Ida and Pengala nadi.  When this takes place you can feel something that is translated into a sense of movement.  Your whole body can wind up feeling like it is moving, and just the centers called chakra will feel like they are moving.  But this effect is the result of the energy rushing up and down and radiating outward.  When you allow your energy to flow naturally, you will also often feel a movement of the chakras. But the chakra is the result of many lines of force coming into a center.  You can hold it back or let it flow.  This can cause the chakra to be still or to move.  The chakra itself is like a whirling vortex.  It is less anatomy as it is EFFECT.  See?

The more these lines of force accumulate or gather, the stronger the force is felt in terms of flow.  It is also why when we describe the chakras, we describe the seven major ones along the core or trunk of our bodies.  We simply can feel these the easiest of the many others that we have. Imagine how it must be inside the vascular system when one vein connects to another vein.  Don’t you think there is some change in the flow as one smaller vein joins into a larger vein?  And what about how major veins connecting into the aorta that runs up the center of the body?  There would exist a large flow of blood and this would naturally feel differently than a small vein in, say, the arm.  In a WAY it is similar with the nadi system of etheric channels that criss-cross the body like a vast nervous system.

These channels are polarized to handle the negative and positive aspects of the energy field in our bodies and as a result we see that there are negative and positively charged channels in the energy body. These are called Yin and Yang in the Chinese system and are called Ida and Pengala in the Indian.  Along the trunk of the body the two channels sit alongside the central channel where the physical spinal column is located as well as the Shushumna nadi or channel.  The Shushumna nadi is associated with our most transcendent energy and leads to expanded or accelerated states of consciousness.

You can see how many of these vertical lines there are in the Chinese meridian diagram below.  While the Chinese system does not identify the chakras, they do a good job of identifying the main channels that move through the arms and trunk of the human body. The Hindu system has the nadis.  I am including first a map of the nadi and meridians to show how similar they are.  They are both based on careful observation over many years.  There are more breakthroughs that will be coming along in the years to come, some are already here with us and are awaiting being reported about.  But for now, the old stuff:

Nadi chart. Source: http://www.yinyoga.com/ys1_3.1.2_nadis.php

The seven chakras lie along a main line of force in the trunk of the body, and form a field of both electrical flow and an electrical field.  In my work with the awakening process, I have found that I have an expanded awareness of how energy works in the body.  None of what I have seen or observed has suggested anything about chakras being removable.  But what it has done is it has shown me that prana follows or is folded into the electricity that the body creates. The chakras are a direct result of our being connected to the universal energy flow.  It is at once a subtle energy as well as an energy that our bodies appear to need like water or air in order to properly function. In awakening it is known just what a stimulating effect this can have on the body such as the endocrine system.  Since 2006-7 when I had the first stirrings of awakening, I have never gotten sick (beyond sinus infections….I seem to be physically predisposed to them in spring and fall).  I work with students who get the flu and mono and all manner of problems, but I have yet to come down with a bad cold or influenza.

The Electrical Aspect

It is helpful to understand how energy arises in the body and where it all starts.

Electrical current is created at the cellular level, and happens as a result of an alternating inspiring and expiring within the cells themselves of both potassium and sodium, along with the intake of calcium.  When sodium is taken in while potassium is expired from the cell, a small electrical potential is created.  This electricity is used by the body to send signals from the body to the brain. (Go HERE to read up on the story of how electricity is created–fascinating stuff!) It is a vast electrical system that allows for a broad range of feedbacks in the form of information to go from cells, to organs, and on to the brain.

Along with this electrical energy is a higher vibrational energy that also sends information that we call prana. What prana is is hard to say since it has never been charted, filmed, or viewed by western science.  We do know what prana does by way of feeling and observing it, though (which is the same thing) Psychics and sensitives, though, have been able to feel and see it in the form of the human aura.

The human aura reveals all aspects of the self as a series of interwoven “templates” or bodies of energy, one nested into the other, that reveal information about the emotional, mental, spiritual, energetic, and physical aspects of our beings.  All of it can be seen or “read” in the aura.  There are many ways to detect this energy, through “seeing” and through feeling.  While we do not have much information through western science about prana, we do have a lot from the Chinese and Indian cultures.  It turns out that this energy can be seen or detected internally through the sensory abilities of the energetic body.  Sometimes this is glimpsed through the third eye, but it can also be observed or sensed through any number of internal non-physical senses.  These are all described as being the “psychic” senses because they do not come in through the physical senses themselves. These are the senses that you have as a being that is a soul having a physical experience, and so these senses are as native to you as your physical ones, but learning how to tune into them is often considered a “revolutionary” activity here on our world.  But you have them and about 6.5 billion others do to, even though they are not using them.

Particles, Waves, Fields, and Flows

Energy fields and electrical energy flows are two sides of the same coin, but they have different properties. A line of energy that flows from one end of the body to another as in the case of electrical signals send information linearly. These flows of energy can be seen as carrying particles called electrons which are either negatively or positively charged and is the “substance” for the physical body to send signals from one place to another fast.  A field, though, is able to send a flow of energy through all space and all time because it has no mass, is not particle-based and thus has no mass.  If you are up on your Einstein, you will know that mass is what keeps you stuck here in this one dimension or space (and physical matter certainly has mass). A particle is very useful for very physical things while a field is something that may well impact the etheric body and the soul and super-consciousness, giving it properties that allow us to go beyond the here and now, literally, in thought and awareness. Sound wild?  Well it is, and it is part of what makes knowing your expanded self so amazing (because you are utilizing this aspect of your being in an more aware manner!)

BUT. A field and a flow are not separate.  You do NOT get a particle when a wave is present any more than you get a wave when a particle is present.  You get BOTH.  The particle/wave duality is itself two sides of the same coin.  One does not produce the other.  They both co-exist.  They are co-dependent, you might say.

Both particle and field, though, are just as important as carriers of information in the body and in consciousness, though.  In fact, the brain shows a mirror resemblance to these two “sides of the coin” in our bodies with a left brain that is linear while the right brain is non-linear.  It also turns out that the left side of the body is known to cohere to the yin or feminine receptive “cool” energy that flows through what the Hindu system describe as the “Ida” etheric (nonphysical prana energy) channel, moving up the main trunk of the body and then does a flip at the corpus callosum and goes into the right brain where the structure of the right brain corresponds with the feminine force we call “kundalini shakti.” It is something that I have observed that corresponds with the awakening of the right brain into a fuller way alongside the awakening of the cosmic energy we call kundalini.  The truth, though, is that both this “new” energy is just the addition of an opposite energy that has been suppressed in most every person on the planet (which then makes kundalini a “rare” event!).

To understand this character of both the energy and the brain, I suggest that you watch Jill Bolte Taylor’s TED Talk (it opens in a separate window–I also put the link at the end, too, in case you want to keep ploughing through this) where she observed first-hand what happens when the left brain is shut down as a result of a stroke.  Her experience?  The marvelous bliss of enlightenment.  For a few hours she was able as a brain scientist, to observe the right brain only.  The experience was enough to move her to tears simply recounting the experience.  The awakening of kundalini is the awakening of awareness.  That is all.  When we allow this awareness to open up in us, our greater potential is realized.

The other side of the body (right) has the yang energy, which is described as hot and more linear in its nature.  It is also described as being like the masculine. This energy flows up the trunk of the body in what is called the Pengali naddi, which is a nonphysical channel through which this force flows.   These are forces that all go well beyond any human nature and into forces in nature and that pervade the universe.

What I have described to you is what the Chinese have charted as the “meridians” and what the Indians have described as naddi. Now here is the clincher that brings all of this into a unity:  as all of these lines of force flow into a main channel, the two polarities of the energy are expressed as a vortex in the field.  The “structure” of the chakra is itself a fux field that moves up and down the center of the trunk of the body (most noticeably there) as two polarized energies running alongside each other.  If it makes it easier to understand, this arrangement is the same as all flux field or energy fields.  The sun has these, the earth has them, and all electrical fields have them along with living things as well. These fields create a shape that is like an ovoid sheath that follows the shape of the body as the flow of energy runs through it.  In the core where the spinal column also is physically located lies the center or “eye” of this flux field of electrical and pranic energy. This creates a kind of donut shape or what is being called a “torus.” A torus is an expression of what energy does, which is to have both positive and negative poles in its structure.  As this field moves, it creates the vortex effect that we know as a chakra.

This is the basis for the chakra system.  In order to be alive, to be sentient, in order to be focused in a body, you must have a chakra.

But what these people are putting forward is a misperception of what the chakras do. The misperception is taking place when a block is removed from the field of a person, which results in a smoothing out of the flow of the energy along the two Ida and Pengala lines in the pranic body system, which results in a smoother flow of energy in consciousness. This is a natural result of removing blocks, which consist entirely of stored or repressed memory as emotions not fully felt that get lodged in the energy body (in the chakras also). These are along locations that correspond with the frequency of both the chakra center in general and with the type of stored emotion (this is why certain chakras will be associated with certain personality or emotional traits—its all frequencies of energy!).  As stored material is removed, these “discs” or”wheels” of energy are found to “calm” down.  And they do as a result of all of this blocked material being released.

What happens is that the chakras move more smoothly, and are not as turbulent for the simple fact that the blocked material is no longer creating this turbulence.  But the idea that you can remove a chakra is strong enough a belief in a person that they can surrogate this idea or confuse this idea of letting go or release as having their chakras removed. In fact, as you remove enough material, the inner world of your energy changes and a new world opens up.  This, though, is just the beginning.  A chakra is not being removed in this “operation” but a release of the material that is stored, which results in a calmer state of being.  Always, as this material is released, it results in a calmer and calmer energetic state. You can have very strong energy in such a state, but it is like a wind that blows through a house when all the windows are open instead of a house with windows partly open. In one case the wind blows without any resistance while in the latter case, there is a lot of resistance and turbulence created.  Same energy, different results.  Our purpose here is to learn how to manage this energy in a meaningful and more peaceful way.

Alongside this is the strange notion that the chakras were created  by entities in order to gain control over our energy bodies by way of karmic contracts. As if forces larger than us are controlling us, and they are not all benign.

What is  accurate is that we are all sovereign beings who are having to face up to the sheer mass of error and hurt that lies within us as a field of accumulated blocks. These blocks, which make our energy less than smooth and peaceful, is what also attracts entities.  I can tell you from first-hand experience of removing etheric entities from others and myself that the issue with ANY entity is the direct result of a fault that is first in us that we have yet to clear up that is attracting the entity in the first place, rather than the result of beings somehow implanting us with something.  First rule in all energy medicine is nothing comes into us that we have not first admitted.  Most often this “allowing” comes in the form of the choices we have made in the past. We want to think we did not “decide” to allow a being to hitch a ride, but when it comes to energy, the language is different.  You attract not based on your conscious permissions but by the part of you that is subsumed in your subconscious where many blocks lay beyond your conscious awareness.  This does not mean that you did not give permission.  You give permission based on HOW you are.  The entities that hitch their rides on us do not understand “permission.”  They only know the fundamental law of energy, which is that like attracts like.  Understand this, and you will begin to understand how this all has happened to everyone on the planet.

When we fall away from our divine nature, forgetting what we are, we naturally create negative karma through our actions. But how we feel is how our energy field flows. How it flows is how it also attracts. So think about what the “flow” of anger is like, or fear, or jealousy.  All of these emotions, positive and negative, all attract based on their vibration, on their underlying character. You can change the vibration by clearing up what the problem was in the first place within you, and it is always something that has not been fully felt.  It is some hurt you felt from the past that serves to create these blocks and also opens you up to entities.  Go that?

Its simple, really, but it is also a lot of “work” to simply find your own inner grace and allow the error of your past to simply fall away.  This “work” can take most people years to do. There is a lot there for us to undo, and its something that takes place over multiples of five years on average….so that in the first five years of awakening a general amount of blocked energy is cleared for most people, with a steady refining taking place into more and more subtle fields of awareness, of consciousness. This is more a steady spiraling of progress that has no end.  But by removing the stored material, you will also remove the places that are unhealed in you that create open areas in your energy field for outsiders to latch on. And to be clear; these beings as they are experienced directly here on our plane are themselves not highly intelligent beings.  They are themselves like energy fragments that have a form of intelligence and are attracted to certain frequencies of human energy since these energies are most familiar to them. When you remove the energy that attracts them, you will feel them also fall away and not return, and if they do try to return, they wont be able to access you as they have in the past.  It is as though a wound has closed in your energy field that these entities have drawn from.  In truth, it is merely a frequency of energy that you are creating with the prana that you have in your body.  It is like taking vibrational energy and turning it into something….and in this case, it just so happens that the things you are creating is delightful to lower vibrational entities.  When you clean up your act, issues with these beings falls away.

The issue of entities is important because just as you have a higher self, so too do these beings.  When we can heal ourselves with awareness of what it is we are doing and what is happening to us, we can also give these beings a little boost, a kind of final send off that if done properly, can at the very least open the door to that entity to evolve in an entirely new way once they are free from us as hosts.  Imagine how huge this could be for us here on earth and for people who are aware of these types of entities. Instead of this being a big huge drag, we could be making HUGE change on an evolutionary scale by facing up to what we each have done in ourselves to open us to these entities, and then to aid these lower forms so that their higher forms also evolve.  This is in truth the great discovery that awaits those who dive into this kind of work.  It can all be an adversary, or it can all be an ally.  Every single being I have encountered has appeared to me being more mono-dimensional than us as humans.  I have removed these beings both from myself and from someone I was connected to at one stage of my development.  I have also seen individuals who have held onto their entities because they believed that they were a kind of protector or ally.  The truth though is that none of us need protection. When we correct ourselves, when we clear ourselves, energetically, the protection that is our own pure vibration naturally emerges as the “white light” that is experienced during awakening.

If entities trouble you, look first at yourself for where the chink in your armor lies.  This is where these come from, and if we want to clear up their influence, each of use need to begin the work of clearing our own fields of the stored material that makes it hard for us to know our true selves.

Chakras are the RESULT of energy flow through the body and are something that cannot be removed.  They form an integral structure of your energy field as a physical and nonphysical being here on earth.  Each chakra will express some aspect of your person-hood and soulfulness.  Like your ego, they are not something to be plucked out and gotten rid of as some have believed.  As Taishen Deshimuru, a Zen master, once observed, it is the ego of the ordinary self that is the eye that observes the cosmic mind (which is cosmic ego!).  What you DO remove is the backlog of stored material, and this leads to a calming of the energy so it flows smoothly, almost imperceptibly.  But ridding yourself of chakras? Its like trying to rid yourself of ego.  For as much as everyone tries to do it and talks about it, there is no one who has ever achieved it.  And that, dear reader, is worth a good giggle at the very least.

I hope that this helps clear up or clarify a few things about the role that energy plays in our bodies.  The chakras can become MUCH smoother when we clear them, and this is really very positive work to do….but it does not mean that the chakra is removed, no.  Just use observation.  Also the role that the entities that are mentioned are merely the result of what our past choices have been to be anything less than our divine potential; our highest.  So keep striving, bright lights!  Keep on your shine and let it flow and runneth over.  As you remove the strands of shadow in your field of awareness, so too will the influences such as beings that are attracted to the less than perfect parts in you. In time, it will all resolve back to its root, back to its origin.  The origin?  Its a kind of Garden Of Eden where we are no longer separate, but together as a species doing what is in the highest for all.  That is a tall order, but this is taking place person by person.  Right now!

Jill Bolte Taylor’s TED Talk

Advanced Energetics Work

Over the course of awakening I have found that my comprehension concerning energy has evolved significantly over the last eight years.  Before awakening I read auras, I had a native ability to pick up on this energy, but when awakening came this sense easily tripled in sensitivity.

As a result of this, I have found that I am picking up on aspects of energy that no one is even talking about.  When I read documents such as on pranayama or on the Golden Flower, I often find that there is a lot missing in understanding what is at work in the energy body of a person.  A few months ago I was being worked on by a therapist who was doing massage and energy work.  I could follow what she was doing, which was clearing individual lines of energy through the meridian or nadi channels in my etheric or energy body.  As she did this, I found myself changing the way that I looked or picked up on my own energy field; I began looking DOWN through the energy channels, and when I did this, I saw something completely different from anything I have ever heard described.  What I was able to see was the presence of the chakra wheels in each channel in a certain arrangement.  This showed to me an aspect of how our energy works, which is how the chakras have their own channels through which their own energy frequency flows alongside the frequencies of other centers. Why this is important is that once you know HOW each intersecting line in the energy body is composed, you can direct pressure into that point in a very exacting way in order to release a portion of a block in, say, the sacral chakra, by how one applies pressure in one portion of the meridian system that is far from the center being worked on.

I have also found that the directional flow that most yogis and other practitioners talk about is not actually the flow of the pranic force but is something else altogether.  While it IS an effect of how energy flows, it is not directly tied to energetic flow, but is in truth more about energetic harmonics.  Have you ever heard about pranic harmonics?  I didn’t think so.  No one talks about it.  What does it mean for a healer?  What does it say about your own level of energetic awareness? What can you do to delve into the world of energy more and understand this at a higher order than you had before? The benefits are that you can help others with their own energy and you can understand your own energy and the energy of the universe.

The question I have is whether or not there is interest in this kind of material.  I know that by expanding our awareness in this region, we can also expand our capacities as healers. What say you?

These Changing Times

It is coming strong now

the pulse of the One

spreads through the many

an undeniable

inevitability….

which sends ripples

glimmers of itself

we turn and find

everything has changed.

I walked over to my neighbor

I shared videos of Terrence

after he spoke of Ayahuasca

and sacred dreams…

and learned

in total serendipity

that he had lived his whole life

awakened

living next to me

silent, alone,

monkish

much like me

until we sat in waning light

for hours

speaking about the cosmic

and the One

and how it speaks to us

and how we speak with it

this great mystery

that surrounds us all…

If we were small enough

would our air seem this thin if it was blood

and we were subatomic?

Are we living in the body of something amazingly huge?

Is it better to know

or to just ask the question?

Questions are where it is at

this much is true

and known

even though the dead dry husks

of knowledge unfold themselves

perfunctory….

it seems the buzz is in finding

the next new petal.

I suppose that is what makes us the same; always on to the next new thing

cosmic impatience

seekers are like this

and we think its all just fine

as the sky spins stars into view and out

again

we meet like this

in different times

and places

we both know this is so…

but how do you say what is obvious

and make it seem to be anything more than out of step with

space and time?

He is moving

I am moving away from this place

and this sudden realization comes

in the waning night

the billiards caroming off one another

as we wonder about what comes next in the world

of awakenings.

Anything we want, everything we hope for.

It all comes like this

where every one I am around is of the same

sometimes secretly

for that moment when

the great reveal comes

so I can sink my teeth into the awe and wonder

that this world offers

and that I love so.

“Anything is possible.”

The Sacred Opposites

The first image that you see is the Glastonbury Tor.  The Tor is an ancient earthwork and is considered to be one of the most important centers of the pagan universe (like Stonehenge to the north).  If you will notice, you will see a seven-layered Yoni form with a Lingam sitting atop it.

The “Lingam” form is a building, but there has been a lot of speculation that the Christians who built it took down a large standing stone that stood in its place. Now if you look at the image below you will see the same imagery, an altar to the masculine and feminine principles of the universe.  This is Hindu. It is interesting to see how similar these two forms are.  The pagans sure do seem to have known that the way through our nature is by way of the seven main chakra centers to reach the core being of ones self.  As far as I know, no one has ever compared these two forms with one another, but their similarity is unmistakable and points to ancient knowledge of how spirituality was tied into the two “opposites” in the universe.

Part II – If Reincarnation Is Real Why Can’t I Remember My Past Lives?

As promised, the second part to my earlier post is included here.

 

 

Part II – If Reincarnation Is Real Why Can’t I Remember My Past Lives?

The argument against reincarnation is that if this is something real, then why don’t we remember our past lives? Its a common query, and a good one.

I can tell you from my own experience what I think is at play here based on having recall of over a dozen different lifetimes. Before I do, though, it is important to note here that in two memories I had recall of languages that were part of nonexistant cultures, or languages that were no longer being used.  I also had memories of spaces that I had never seen previously but wound up seeing them after the memory came into full awareness (one was a Mayan temple).  I have also a memory from Egypt that was part of an initiatory rite…one that was unlike anything I had EVER read.  I always considered it strange, but was able to find an account of an individual who was describing an initiatory rite that involved the exact same details as in my experience in what was a hypnotic regression.

Now while it may be technically possible for me to have come across the languages that I encountered, I know that prior to my experiences, I had no opportunity to do so.  In one memory I was able to discern correctly the name of the masculine form of energy that was considered to be part of the life force also called prana in the Hindu tradition, and was able to see its use in proper context in the situation being described in the memory.  In another, I heard many minutes of the language of a now-extinct people and heard enough language to be able to identify the name of the people and locate where they had inhabited. I also was able to look into government accounts (Army) of a situation with my people as they came into conflict with the posted military in the region that was an identical situation that unfolded also within my own memory some years previously (a daring raid on an army outpost where horses were stolen and several of my comrades were shot–myself included).  I can also tell you that I have recall of my choosing my parents, which took place before my conception or very near it. This might seem unusual or even strange to some, but it is a memory that is as clear as any other I have had and stands as the earliest memory I have ever had in this life and has me floating up among the pine boughs of Northern Florida watching the people who would become my parents in a way that I can only describe as a warm affection.

I can also say that it was in a recent therapy session with a Kahuna masseuse, I was able to release enough past trauma locked in my body that it freed up the pre-life memory of chosing this life even as I knew that my father would die before my second birthday and that my mother would remarry a man who would serve to marginalize me in my family and early life (which was extremely difficult for me).

I can tell you that I highly suspect that there is an intelligence at work within us, “above” us that orders all of this for us.  The higher self?  I think so.  I do.  I can recall feeling vividly how I had CHOSEN all of this stuff, this terrible scenario, to be born into.  Coming away from it, I know in my heart that while my early life conditions were not the best from a rational perspective, it was the very thing that I need in order to develop. The only thing that suffering ever achieves for us is when we learn to no longer suffer. None of this might make any sense to us rationally, though, but our development is not always a rational one.

Sometimes I think we need those things that will help to flush out our most difficult issues.  Essentially, we come here to face our demons.  Which is to say that we come here to find a place of direct honesty about the core of our problems in our soul in order to heal and pull them from their roots.  But there is a problem with remembering some of this material from other lives before we are ready.

Consider how our past looks. Our past is full of murder and intrigue.  Armies have been raised to bludgeon other leaders to submission in order to conquer land, people, and treasure.  And our past has been one hell of a difficult slog.  You might want to think that you were the one person who was untouched by all of this horror, but I think you would be wrong.  To overcome our past, we face what it means for us here now.  We don’t even need to look into the past to know the terrible things there, we need only feel into what is here inside of us.  For most, what is within us is submerged into the depths that psychologists call the subconscious.  But there is a way to make the subconscious more conscious, and as this happens, more of the self comes into unity.  The effect?  Greater awareness about who we are begins to emerge.  Our place as beings in this world and in other worlds also begins to emerge.  The illusion that this is the one place and the only place that we will be quickly begins to dissolve as the self reaches into an emergent depth of self where even more mysteries of who and what we are begin to emerge.  This work is not for the feint of heart, but it is real.  Part of it can also be about what has taken place in past lives.

The reason why we forget or do not remember our past lives is manifold.  There is something about our brain development that does it; I can remember things as an infant that were not within reach until much later in my life.  Also, there is a kind of veil that we all talk about that most people agree is present within us that keeps us from dipping into other lifetimes and their memories.  This veil is a cognitive one that has to do with how we are focused here and also how we are each in our own way divided within our larger brain and consciousness functioning.  When these centers in the brain are activated, they also appear to trigger the ability to tap into relevant memories, memories that our bodies do not have, but that our consciousness has the ability to tap into in much the same way that we can remotely view an event or tap into the internet, but one in which the connection is how we are related to this past (or even future) self.

But forgetting is in some ways a godsend for us.  It helps to create a buffer for us when we are stuck in a rut spiritually.  Consider what it might be like for you if you were to remember the last six lives you have lived and found out that you wound up being murdered each and every time, or worse, that YOU murdered people in every life for the last six. It would probably be a reality that is too hard to face, right? I can tell you that when it has come to the most recent memories I have had, these have been presented in a very limited fashion to me.  I was only given or only remembered a small flash, just enough to clue me in on what the memory was all about, but I got little else.  It seems that for my higher self, there is no interest in just dredging the past up for the sake of it.  When something is relevant, it comes up, but the memory is highly specific to what it is that I am learning.

I rarely get a random memory of something from a past life just because.  The memory most often links directly into something that I am learning that links back through time.  In a way, the memory is sometimes a kind of bonus or reward for working through some kind of material that is here and now but that also touches on other lifetimes.  This most often happens in the midst of what I call “release work” which involves releasing negative karmic threads, cords, or knots in the self, knots that follow us lifetime to lifetime until we clear them up.

The longer we carry some cords from one life to another, the more we “pull” a cord down through time.  And when the cord is released, you can sometimes feel a very real release like how a rope might feel when its pulled tightly across a physical chasm, except its a chasm in the self.  If you pay attention you can feel the cord as it loosens from the present moment all the way back through the lifetimes that the cord touches. For me, there is a moment of rapid recognition that takes place that sometimes is lightening fast.

The first step in remembering your lifetimes is to be open to the possibility that they exist.  Then be aware of elements in your dreams that point to historical elements.  But more than that, sometimes reincarnational material can come through in very normal ways, too. DO you ever experience “versions” of people or even yourself in dreams? Sometimes this can point to reincarnational material (not always, sometimes this “version” is just that….an experience with other selves not even in the physical yet or in this reality). One way of delving into reincarnational material is to examine how you feel about other people, absent any memory of them. While you may not always get precise information, you will get some aspects close.

One method for remembering past lives is to use regression therapy, a type of hypnosis that is intended to take the subject back to a certain time period in their lives.  This method was accidentally discovered as useful for past lives when the therapist using it accidentally allowed the person to go further back than intended and found that the person was not describing events from childhood, but from a past-life adulthood instead.

One very good way to know who you were like before is to look at who you are today.  Look at all the things that interest you…and its possible that you have experienced many different iterations of these interests.  For example, I have been very interested in art, psychology, religion, and politics.  I know that I have studied in monestaries in both Tibet and in Europe.  I have made a study of world religions it would seem, and my interest in the arts has come in in a variety of ways.  I have been both a solo artist, an artist on teams, I have been involved in glass houses in Europe, and I have been a leader who oversaw artists who helped to adorn temples.  I have been interested in the hidden force in life known as prana in a myriad of ways….as a Native American, a Polynesian, Egyptian, Buddhist, and early Christian, and as myself in this life today (working as an artist and educator).

The Earth Shattering Implications Of Nonduality

I am going to go for the money shot and use words like “Earth Shattering” and “Implications” because I think its time to grab some attention.  It is time to grab your attention because there is something huge going on in the realm of hyperspatial realization…..otherwise known as nonduality.

In the same way that L.S.D. was a revolutionary drug during the 1960’s that helped people to see, feel, and look at the world differently, so too is nonduality every bit as revolutionary.  Actually, its more so because there is a chemistry in your physical body that is created that continues or drives your ability to continue to have these experiences of nonduality, its what Jana Dixon wrote about in her incredibly important book called The Physiology of Kundalini. Its her own observations about the chemistry of the experience, and there is a lot there. As you might know already, there is a dearth of research on the issue of kundalini, so a lot of what is related is based on observation and not peer review or having hundreds of subjects on board for testing (as this is still a somewhat rare experience that is slowly becoming less-rare there is a lag in information on the subject outside of the Vedas and Eastern traditions)

Nonduality is a mind-bending kind of experience because it has the power to remake your psyche.  It really is just that powerful of an experience.  You might wonder why on earth would your psyche need to be re-formed, and to that I will say that the very process of thought needs to change in some fundamental ways if the energetic flow o the source code material is to move through you.  You cannot send a signal of any kind unless the device is properly prepared.  The body and the nervous system and brain all must go through a reformation process if any of this is going to be successful, and this is hard for people who are strong in the ego department (which means most of us as westerners).  Trust me, for those of you who think you don’t have strong egos, ego goes far deeper than what we normally think it does.  Modern psychiatry has only scratched the surface of understanding the ego, never mind how to deal with ego once the force of kundalini is raging in you and ego is putting up a fight deep in the recesses of your subconscious self. This is where mania happens, or where psychotic breaks occur if you aren’t careful.  This is a powerful force, no less powerful than a DMT trip but absent the visual hallucinations, but full of feeling and awareness of the reality of how things are, dawning one moment to another moment within your awareness. It is a trip unlike any other, but it is also a trip that is about moving from illusion to reality.

For people who enter this realm who are overly rational and mental, this can spell winding up in an institution.  But for those who can go with the flow of the experience, then amazing things lie in wait. You might have been drawn to the idea of the exotic trip with ayahuasca in the Amazon or trying DMT or other psychedelics.  However, what I can promise you is that all of this same kind of chemistry already exists inside of you….not the kind of chemsitry where you trip or hallucinate necessarily, but an experience that opens you up dimensionally within your brain and cellular intelligence to the hyperdimensional nature of both your consciousness and the physical universe all at the same time.  And what is this universe? Its really kind of wild.  What appears to be random objects in space just bumping up against each other, all their own shape and form and for sentient life, their own individual selves, is actually a vast organism of being wherein everything is connected.  And this is not itself a seeming.  It is what is there once your mind opens or “blooms” through the thousand-petalled lotus of the Hindus or the Golden Flower of the Taoists.  This is the Ka of the Egyptians, and the Kah of the Maya and Polynesians.  It turns out that its all the same thing.

What makes nonduality so incredibly huge and important to us today is that when you are under its influence, you can literally become the thing you look at. I dont mean an illusion of sameness or connection, but independantly verifiable connection whereby just as two photons which have been “entangled” (connected through an association with each other) and when taken apart, one photon will react when the other photon is being energized.  This has been found to happen over vast distances and that time and space may have no effect on entangled particles. Deeper down this rabbit hole is the realization that physicsts are coming to which (is not surprise to me) is that is is potentially possible that EVERYTHING in the universe is somehow entangled with itself.  This means that we are all connected in together.  It means that when you are able to have the flow of energy moving through you that ancients have described as the universal force, you can FEEL anything that is out there.

The Gospel of Philip, which is rich in its use of nonduality elements explains that in our world here we can see the sun and then we can walk away and we know that we are separate from it.  We can do the same with people, with the moon, flowers, institutions, events, and atoms.  However, in the “other” world, as Philip puts it, when we look at the sun, be become the sun.  When we look at a person, we become that person.  When we see a war, we become that war, or other event.

What happens in nonduality is that the barrier betwen self and other falls away.  In truth, this barrier was not real. It never was.  It was a construct of the self to keep the self separate from everything else.  And yet, all of our seeking is actually about how we are connected to something larger, something bigger.  It is as though we cut ourselves off from a wonderful kingdom only to then go on pining for that land lifetime to lifetime.  This way of being is what we seek.  It is what we are after.  Religions will package it certain ways, but in all truth, you do not need a religion or method to know God or the living universe.  You just don’t. And without a religion, you have no beliefs that you MUST cling to, some of which are subject to the error of thousands of people who followed in the first teacher’s footsteps that then get copied through the texts as this material gets distributed through the world.  Why even go for such a “lossy” way of copying information. What if I told you that there is a way to knowing that is far more direct and transformative and that it does not require a drug trip nor a lot of money, or a teacher or a method, or any of that.

It is also the end of all belief if you are brave enough for that. It is the end of belief and the beginning of EXPERIENCE.  Why BELIEVE in a god when you can experience that god directly? You see, with nonduality, the seeming barrier between you and the other thing only exists in your mind.  YOU have created this barrier, and you have also maintained it, all the while holding back a VAST realm of energy. And you know, the world has gotten so expert at holding it back that it views letting go as the ultimate in defeat, of laziness, of not being “with it” or being focused here in this world.  It is in some measure not so different from what the beat and hipsters sought to do, which was to find a new way….ANY way out of the maze they had found themselves in.  The really courageous thing was that this did not involve religions necessarily, although a lot of people did trade a religion for something like Hindu gods and goddesses.  Some people even grew their hair, wore turbans and took eastern-sounding names like Ram Das or the like. I’m not criticizing those people because in a way, they needed to feel different and be different and this was a path for them to do it. They also gave up fundamentalism (most likely) for something far more embracing of differences and the great mystery of the universe. And certainly the Eastern traditions have a much better grasp on mystery than the western traditions ever seemed to have (except for the mystic strains that ran through Judaism, Islam, and Christianity).

The power to BE the thing that you observe.

What happens when this comes over you is that you FEEL the thing you observe.  You can quite literally receive direct imprints in the form of energetic psycho-physical data that is nearly instantaneous.  It leads to having high psi abilitiy as a result, or what we call psi. Yesterday I felt how my neighbor had suddenly come into my mind and I could feel his focus and presence on me in some way.  I found later that day as I got home that he had put a note on my door, the first of its kind ever since I have lived next to this guy, and it was about how he really wanted to see my house because he knows I am wanting to sell it. It turns out that at the same time when I felt his presence inside of me while visitng with a friend, he was on his way to my house sticking the note on my door.  This morning, for example, I could feel how an electronic transaction was being done that resulted in money being transferred to my account.  After four days of no activity on the end of the entity that was responsible for doing this, I suddenly could feel this rather cursory sense that someone or something had “seen” my transaction in a database somewhere and had marked my money for transfer. I had checked my account earlier and there was no money from this transaction.  Then within an hour of having feeling this, I checked my account to find that the money had been transferred at the time that I had felt it actually happening.  This is what I mean about this world that you enter into. It has a new set of rules, you could say, nd with it come a flood of different experiences. It also means a  different awareness and sense of responsibilty for what and HOW you feel.  I can tell you that its a strong motivational force for cleaning up the hard rough feelings that you can sometimes feel that is part of the inner architecture of the self that you once thought was separate and alone in this world.

But this is not for everyone.  Its only for those people who want to grapple with the truth of things.  If you want to make deals with reality, its best not to even try waking up this awareness within you because all you will have will be struggles.  I know this because I myself have tried this route and its hard, difficult, and can make you feel like you are being crushed under some amazing weight of indifferent truth that simply cannot be swayed or changed.  Gone are the days of your own private counterfeiting of reality and here is the reality of what actually IS.  The advantage to living your life WITH the truth is that your life is guided by an intelligence that is far more advanced than your own.  This is what Jesus meant when he said “I am one with the father.”  In truth, the documents had him saying “I am one with the father and mother.”  The whole concept of this being an engine of energy generation within the self has been completely lost in Christianity.  Also lost is the truth of how consciousness and the energy of consciousness is arranged the same way that electrical fields are oriented, which is in the shape of a torus.  This torus has a positive and negative polarity, the same polarity that the ancients called the feminine and masculine traits of consciousness.  This is also the same as the father and mother that Jesus spoke of.  It is the Shakti and Shiva of the Hindus.  It is the Yin and Yang of the Chinese.  The Holy Ghost in Christianity is the lost potential, the hidden face of our very consciousness and universe.  This “she” is the receptive side of all energy.  This is what all of the ancients have been describing all along.  Once this energy begins to connect into itself after you have removed the very real barriers in your cognition, the energy begins to flow automatically.  Kundalini flows, the Kah and the prana flow through you like liquid light.  You become incandescent.  You instantly achieve a high level of gnosis. You inherit something that was talked about over and over by Jesus, but has been largely miscomprehended….which is my word for “misunderstood.”  There was simply not a language that Jesus could describe all of this within and have it be well understood.  Jesus used words like “adultery” to explain how the self separates itself from this experience of nonduality, which divides one from the experience of being one with the father and mother.  He explains this in the Gospel of Mary, but most people who read these passages don’t even catch on to what it is he is saying. This is not just a simple case of misinterpretation on my part, its a lack of being able to understand the level at which this guy operated at.  The untold story was that he and his followers often operated at an incredibly high level of comprehension and yet they had very clumsy tools to try to get his across to people.  Consider that Jesus tells his disciples that he tells the masses about these secrets, put them right out in front of them in the form of parables, and yet it is like showing a blind person something that they just cannot and will not see.  He then says to his disciples that he speaks plainly to them and even THEY have a hard time understanding what it is he is saying. He was largely misunderstood. We turned his parables into stories about right and wrong and we lost the incredible depth that was there.

I am bringing up Jesus because he is a good example for how we just totally miss the boat on these things.  This is not an intellectual apprehension that is taking place.  This is something far more fundamental that is beginning to flower in your awareness, which is far more complex that mere thought.  When you become nondual your whole body begins sending you messages about this experience that is undeniable. It is also very powerful. It can also be overwhelming.  It takes a lot of willingness to stick with it and…..grow up.  To become more responsible and engaged with reality as it is and as it will unfold if you let it, and to also let go of your own individual need to try to make sense of things while your own mind merges into what I can only describe is a “superluminal mind” that is outside of time and has no restrictions placed on it. If there is any singularity that need take place in our tech world, it is the singularity of non-duality and how it can have wonderfully earth-shattering implications for us as individuals, as a culture, as a world, and as a universe.

But you need to hurry; we need more like you so others can understand just what it is I have been saying these last 2400 words.  There is no cost of admission but you do need to be ready for it.  Your innermost self will tell you if you are because you wont be able to keep it out of your mind.  Then, if that is the case, ask yourself if you can handle a practice that becomes a daily process wherein you become by shedding what you thought was important in favor of what will wind up, perhaps a decade from now, perfect for the self you will become.  The change will be rapid, fast-paced and it might be hard to keep old relationships.  It might be hard to work sometimes.  You might want to set aside some funds so you can go camping or go on a retreat or to work part-time for a while as your self unwinds lifetimes of error and distortions.  You shed a skin, or many skins, to find what you have been searching for.

P.

Manufacturing Belief – How Reincarnation Went From Accepted Church Doctrine To Heresy

Theodora from a mosaic in SanVitale in Ravenna.

There was a time when reincarnation was understood to be a part of life in the early Christian church, beginning with Jesus himself who mentions it in various ways and at various points in books that escaped the noted heresy hunters of the early church. To understand this story and how a central teaching could have been stricken so completely from the dogma of a religion, it helps to know some history surrounding the change.  So come with me on a quick tour of the past as I bring to you the documents of the time as they come alive with the mystique of a conspiracy to quell or silence something basic as the root of our becoming as spiritual beings.  It is a story that will have the power to leave billions without the awareness of who they are deeper down and what they are capable of as sovereign beings here on the earth. It is about, I think, about the true seat of power which has remained unclaimed by easily 95% of every person who has inhabited the earth for the last two-to three thousand years.

Stirring Up Differences For Gain

At least in part, the storm surrounding reincarnation has to do with Jesus himself and an idea that had little to nothing to do with reincarnation, but everything about who Jesus was.  This is what I call the “scattershot effect” of unintended consequences that we see  through history:  a ruler outlaws one thing while something unrelated gets pulled into the scope at the same time and “taken out.” Its sad to see and it happens a lot (and I assume this is what happened in the case of our story here—there may be still yet more to the story than I am uncovering!).  In this case, there were two schools of thought that raged not long after the church was founded under Constantine.  One were  people like Nestorius, the Abbot of Antioch (in Turkey), who said that Mary should be the mother of Jesus, not of God.  Nestorius explained that Mary birthed a man, not a God. Along with Nestor is also Origen and a few others who were writing about much more mystical and subtle takes on the teachings of Jesus. But it is this second view that I describe and the people surrounding it, that came under attack in the church. The subtext here with the view of these people is that we can all work and ascend to the same height as Jesus did (John 14-12).  This, though, amounts to heresy within the church today. This form of thinking came under direct attack from a group of thinkers called the monophysitics who held that Jesus was not a man but was merely God.  End of story. It  is the Christological position that Jesus had only a single “nature” which was either divine or a synthesis of divine and human. Monophysitism was at loggerheads with dyophysitism (or dia-, dio-, or duophysitism) which maintains that Christ had two natures, with one being divine while the other was human after the incarnation. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monophysitism)

The journey of awakening that I am experiencing shows clearly that we have the means within to reach to a broader awareness of who we are, an awareness that can shatter and destroy our previous preconceptions of who we think we are.  It wasn’t always this way, though, as the history on the issue shows. When I went looking to try and find some understanding or a common voice on the matter of my awakening, I came across the Gnostic works of the Nag Hammadi and found page by page that they were describing the experience of nonduality and the awakening from which this experience so commonly springs.  And really, this is so uncommon an experience that you can’t fake or mistake it too often when reading someone else who is “under the influence” of having been awakened. You are dealing with a hyperdimensional phenomenon probably not too unlike some of the things that Terrance Mckenna describes in his DMT trips.  So unique are these that its hard to mistake them for anything else on the planet.  So the same was with my experience and the people who were saying “Here we are, we know what you are going through!”  were people who had long since left the planet.  Clearly, a lot had been weeded out over the generations.  Even if its been done by an agency as holy and sacred as the church, I feel that we each have a responsibility to place the truth back where it belongs even if that truth has suffered or has been misplaced…by a pope, even. And so it is that I write about these clashing factions because in some way the discussion is not yet over in regards to what happened. Perhaps once we know and we can reconcile it so that its mystery no longer captures us, we can then move on to bigger and better things.

The effect, though, is powerful.  In documents that the church puts forward, the issue of reincarnation is not even mentioned.  It does not mention how, by the way, the Council  did away with the ideas of reincarnation while dispensing with the question that was very much open at the time about Jesus as God or man.  I mean, it really was an issue that people argued over at one time.  It was a new thing, and that was why people batted the idea around. Okay, they didn’t bat it around; they contested, and argued.  It was obviously a hot button issue for some people. It was, for some, a terribly important issue, and it was one that the Orthodox folks wanted to make sure got said right for all time: Jesus was God.  Period.  End of argument!  And if you try to argue it anymore, we have some nice folks who will come and take your head away from your body or other such things.  It is as though the reincarnation bit just didn’t even exist. On an orthodox historical sight, there is not a peep about any of this whatsoever.  And this is how knowledge is rewritten or remade.  It is also how history is rewritten. It is done just as Napoleon stated; by the victors.  But how do you strike something from the hearts and souls of all men and women? You brin in a ruler who simply makes it so.  They call in people who will destroy records, or who will label someone “anathema” and have them banished from polite society (remember John the Baptist?  Well, that guy was out in the desert because he was a troublemaker—he dared speak the truth and for that he was marginalized, physically, from the rest of society).

To understand all of this, its helpful to delve into the arguments being made about what people actually thought back in the day.  A way of thinking back then  was that Jesus was all-God and not a man who achieved godly status, explained by way of the fact that he just merely “came around” (with some help from John the Baptist) to who he was, which was unmistakable and something he could not escape. This way of thinking was called monophysitism.  These were two VERY different ways of thinking about Jesus.  One way suggested that we each could become like Christ (see Gospel of Phillip who asserts that his master was actually making the disciples Christs themselves). The suggestion in this view was that we had to take on Christ by allowing him into our hearts and lives as our personal savior who also happened to have paid an ultimate sacrificial debt. This was itself a very different matter from what Phillip proposed and which many others in the newly-discovered Nag Hammadi codices have also asserted.  It is what I have noted as one of the most basic misunderstandings about ourselves as spiritual beings and will either assist us or limit us depending on which path you accept as a belief. And yet, here we are today, with the debt that Jesus paid as being so incredibly central to belief. In fact, the way to take on Christ Consciousness today is by accepting his sacrifice….while what I consider to have been the original teaching of his reaching for the highest heights in order to help others to follow, to, in the words of Phillip in his gospel, teach others to be Christs. What Phillip knew and what every authentic enlightened human will know is that you have got to get right with God within yourself and no one else can do it for you.  Kingdom of God being within you and all of that, right?   I know you are wondering what this might have to do with reincarnation, so hang on…I will need to paint a picture for you about what was taking place in the early church.

These were the two divergent themes that were working against each other, right along with the political aspirations of both the emperors and other rulers under the main emperor.  Imagine a world and a time when the church power and the state power were intermingled as a result of the Church’s rise of influence among the people a century earlier. This was Rome.  It had decided to make an alliance with one of the most popular religions of the time.  But what exactly was Rome doing?

This church, along with its followers, were a rag-tag band of people who were the only individuals in the empire who were willing to die for their beliefs.  The Christians back then were like the death martyrs of the Muslim extremist of today who walks into a crowd, willing to give his  or her life in order to take out the unbelievers.  I know how hard it might be for Christians to accept this comparison, but in terms of just how ardently the early Christians believed, then yes, it is a fair comparison in terms of fervor and willingness to become a martyr (many did, and of course most of Jesus’s disciples were killed at one point or another for daring to bring the good news). This was the condition of early Christianity decades prior to its being instituted as a state-accepted religion.  Pagan (Roman) statues were being toppled in highly public ways by these people, and they saw being nailed to a cross as an honor.  These people believed that a better kingdom was at hand and they were ready and willing to see the old kingdom (as they understood it) to be toppled so that the great peaceful world of their king Jesus could be installed.  This was at about three to four hundred years after the death of Jesus where they believed that when he said a new kingdom would come, that this was literal truth.  There was also the Revelation of John in which he describes a rather brutal take-down of the bloody harlot that most scholars agree was Rome.  The kingdom was at hand and Christians were ready to help tease it into existence.  Jesus had even said the Kingdom was at hand, didn’t he?  And I ask, given how brutal life was back then, why wouldn’t you yearn for a new Way, provided by a more peaceful leader, a Christ?  Given how people were choosing to understand the doctrine that Jesus laid out several centuries before, this became a rallying cry to those who would follow him.  Christianity was not going away, this much was clear.

There was a split that had to do with teachings that were largely scoured from the early church, but whose memory of them still remained in pockets within the church.  It was this divide, believe it or not, that would lead to the Inquisition centuries later.  It was partly due to a Gnostic-leaning Cathar sect in the church that threatened the established power structure of the church as authoritarian and paternalistic that the Inquisition even began (and turned into the bloodbath this it is now known for). That, though, is for another post.  Back to the 5th and 6th century A.D……

It was in this environment that there were many people with many different divergent ideas about who Jesus was and what his teachings were all about.  In fact, there was an “Old Rome” and “New Rome” split that was slowly taking place after the Council of Nicea which placed Christianity in its place of power where it would grow and eventually find a place at the table with every European government or colony of them that followed.  The split I am talking about was one that had to do not just with a church but also a State (Rome). So when you say Rome or Christianity, you are saying the the same thing, even though the two were different entities, they both aided the other in sharing power. And this was no small insignificant earthly power!  But this was a power that had an inner division, and it had everything to do with religion.  Christian religion.

The two Romes that were splitting were doing so due to resentments having to do with the theology (not Roman law) of this new religion. The Eastern Roman Empire centered in Constantinople and the Western Roman Empire located in Rome experienced a split initially due to Constantine seeking to name himself a ‘Proto-Apostolos’  meaning ‘first of the apostles’, and placed his tomb in the middle of the cenotaph of the Twelve Apostles in Constantinople. (nestorian.org)

People both in and out of power were furious with Constantine’s efforts to write himself into the history books in this way, and it led to some bitter divisions.  The result was that those within the church who were divergent along these lines found themselves in disputes between two divisions in the church. This led to infighting between the more literal-thinkers and the mystic-thinkers in the church and was most likely the reason for a lot of the early finger-pointing and labeling people anathema and heretics.  I suspect that the diversity in the church up to this time may have been much more tolerated simply because the differences were not pressed upon or tested so much until Constantine got greedy and dishonest with trying to make himself seem chummy with the Apostle by being buried among them. The biggest divisions had already been worked out of the church, hadn’t they?  Hadn’t the heretics and their deadly books been dispensed with through hanging or burning (both the people as well as the scrolls they claimed were important to understanding Christianity) a generation before at the instituting of the church in the 5th century A.D.?

When you point out the differences in another of your own kind, you can reveal division where a moment before there was none.  You can CREATE division.  It is through division that support, power, and riches, are all commonly taken either through force or by way of theft.  It is also how you take down an opponent politically at the knees. If I show how different you really are from the average person, I can easily gain more support for my cause or side.  Whether in politics or religion, the effect is the same.  Identify how they are different.  Boom.  All you need are enough people behind you and you can steer change within the government or church in the way that you want. You can ardently believe in your cause or you can not believe a word of it.  It does not matter.  The strategy works either way.  Remember, when we talk about history, we aren’t always talking about the high water marks of truth and justice, but in what people took to be right at the time….for whatever reason they did so. Knowing what is true and being in power were themselves often mutually exclusive.

A Difference In Gnosis

Against this background there is a rich history of early church fathers who wrote about the pre-existance of the soul and about reincarnation.  This had been in place for centuries before the 400-550 A.D. period which became so contentious where it was related to religion.  Origen was one such early writer who wrote about the soul existing prior to birth as well as what would become controversial thinking about such things as final reconciliation of all creatures, including perhaps even the devil (the apokatastasis). (wikipedia.org) Nestorius and others like him were early writers who all either hinted or pointed directly at pre-existance as an accepted fact of early church teachings.  It would be through various councils that these kinds of writings would be considered anathema and heretical. They would have no place in the church.

The way that this most directly happened within the church was that a woman named Theodora, who rose from humble beginnings to be the chosen concubine of emperor Justinian. Later as his wife, she was instrumental in making the changes in the church doctrine that made reincarnation an outsider once and for all. The question is who is this Theodora and how did she wield such power?

Theodora was born the daughter of a bear-keeper of Constantinople’s hippodrome in about AD500.  Her father who died when she was young, led her mother to bring her daughters into the theater in order to make a living, which was again at the Hippodrome, a large 30,000 seat facility where major performances were viewed by the people of the day.  Thus, Theodora was an early actress. (Duffy, The Guardian)

Some of what we know about Theodora comes from  a searingly critical account of her and her husband’s lives that was so controversial that it was ordered to be printed AFTER the author’s life. This book, Procopius’s Secret History, is no doubt part fiction mixed with fact.  Whenever you have a critic that is as harsh as this author is, you cannot escape such a reality.  The problem though is that these kinds of accounts are mixed with what is true and what is not true.  Procopious was assigned to the same military leader that was called upon to depose a pope later on in our historical jaunt through time.

There is one school of thought that seeks to raise Theodora to the level of saint (which she is in the church) and another which does the exact opposite.  What we do know is that she had a child before meeting up with Justinian. We also know that she sought to be mistress to Hecebolus who was then-governor of Persipolos, which is located in what is now known as Lybia (northern Africa). She may have been a prostitute.  She was said to have so abused her position with Hecebolus that he had her stripped of her riches (which he bestowed upon her) and cast her out with nothing but the clothes on her back.  This was all at the insistence of the people being governed, who seemed to so despise this woman that they demanded such actions be taken.  (Seiler, facts-are-facts.com) Its hard to know precisely what are facts from the book written by Procopius, but one thing is clear; Theodora set up a home for women who had been prostitutes in order to care for them and provide them a means out of their former life.She is said to have “rounded up” about 500 prostitutes and forced them into a convent.  Was it forced, or was she doing them a favor? Was she thinking back on her own life when she was a prostitute also? I am not here judging the woman.  Every saint has a past and every sinner has a future as far as I am concerned.

Theodora worked her way back to the circles of power in Alexandria after this fall, and along the way she was taken in by a hermit named Eutyches who was forced into exile by Rome for his doctrine of monophystism, which held that Jesus was all-God and not a man who rose to become godly, which was what Origen and Nestorius along with many other before them had written and taught about.  Theodora remembered the kindness bestowed to her and sought to press for the monophystic view as an accepted part of church dogma when she rose back through the ranks again in Rome and was able to catch Justinian’s eye and marry him. Theodora was thus an important, central, even, character, in helping to bring the monophysitists back to the church (realize, the monophystics had been banished up until this time by the powers within Rome–this is the point where the church and state intermingled).

What happened in the early church was that when someone had an idea that they wanted to put forward, they did so in a public forum, hoping to gain populist support for it.  If this opinion was popular enough, it had a chance of making its way into the canon.  These meetings were called “synods” and numerous groups within the church would call them.  If there was a show of support for the ideas presented in the synod, those at the forefront of these meetings would press for an Ecumenical Council be called so that an important decision could be made about what was being presented or discussed. Synods were called both for and against this concept related to the nature of Jesus as both man and god.

It was in 451 that the 4th Ecumenical Council was called.  This was also referred to as the Council of Chalcedon and it was used to formerly condemn monophy. Theodora later pressed Patriarch Mennas to convene the synod of the Eastern Church of Constantinople in 543, which sought to revoke the condemnation of monophystism as well as the affirmation of reincarnation (yes, folks, you read that right; the church had at one time affirmed reincarnation) which was codified in the church law or doctrine in 451. And so it was that one Council affirmed reincarnation while another just a few years reverses its position. And you know what happened?  Everyone who were followers began believing what the church told them to believe. It just happened.  And it spread like wildfire, apparently.

Now remember how I said that there was an Eastern and Western split in the church?  In order to gain the kind of support that Theodora needed for this action, she had to also bring the Western Roman Empire under her control. How to do this? Theodora was cunning in her efforts.  Belisarius was commanded by Theodora to depose the reigning Pope Silverius who had been installed by the Goths. This Pope was the former subdeacon Silverius, the son of Pope Hormisdas (Wikipedia, Belisarius).  In this way, Theodora was able to aggregate power both for her and her husband’s empire while also getting the support of a larger church under her wing to lend more power to her efforts to unify the church around the concept of a monophysite Jesus.

Some have argued that Theodora did not like the concept of reincarnation because it had the power to wipe away her ability to ascend to the level of a worshiped goddess.  By having one life, she would be judged based on those deed, not those of other lifetimes, and it was Theodora who wanted to be worshiped in the way that the ancient emperors and empresses were worshiped from the time of the Caesars.

it was reincarnation, though, that helped to explain why one person would be born into great riches, while another would be born into poverty, or why one person would have a club foot while another would have what would have been considered a beautiful body at the time. Reincarnation may have opened a huge can of worms that would also help to explain so much about why our world was the way it was.  It was this view, however, that was rejected in the 6th century and has remained the reigning view ever since.

The books  or codices that were dug up from the desert near the town of Nag Hammadi reveals Jesus speaking to his disciples and other followers about souls being “sown” back into new bodies, explaining why some people come into a life with advantages and others with disadvantages.  It was all because of what had happened in another lifetime. The journey-work of perfecting ourselves, it seems, requires a very long period of study over lifetimes in order to get to a place where we move into “heaven.”  Instead of a place, this is a state of being.  I will also point out that what has sparked awakening of the divine within has all been the same regardless of religious affiliation: it has been an encounter with a brilliant pure white light.  Those who have had awakenings have described these flashes of bright white light and those who have have Near Death Experiences (NDE’s) have also described the same encounter with a white light.  Both return from their experiences changed.  Many often begin work that seeks to serve humankind.  Some become healers, some teachers.  All feel driven to make a change in the world.  It was also a description within the Nag Hammadi codices that identify that this white light encounter is something that unites us with the part within that knows heaven and can learn to anchor this state of being to earth.  The experience is universal in the sense that anyone being so touched by this light will experience a range of symptoms that are the same.  The Hindu describe this as the activation of kundalini. The Christians describe this as the Holy Ghost, and the Pacific Islanders call this Kah. The Egyptians also called this force as Ka, and was the part of us that left the body upon death.

 

Next up:

Part II – If Reincarnation Is Real Why Can’t I Remember My Past Lives?

Sources

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Origen

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belisarius

http://www.nestorian.org/the_lynching_of__nestorius.html

http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2010/jun/10/theodora-empress-from-the-brothel

http://www.facts-are-facts.com/magazin/6-reincarnation-the-churchs-biggest-lie.ihtml

http://legacy.fordham.edu/halsall/basis/procop-anec.asp

Cleaning Up Your Act

I’d like to pass something on to you that is….completely different.  Its about a universal cleaner that I began using seven years ago and since I have been using it, I have not looked back.  I do not own a dark closet full of cleaners.  Instead, I have gone green and I use ONE cleaner for nearly all of my cleaning jobs. Now before I tell you what this amazing green cleaner is, I will state for the record that I still use ammonia and bleach as cleaning agents in my laundry and for some cleaning jobs. But beyond natural soaps without perfumes, dyes, or harsh chemicals, I have gone as natural as possible.

You might think that unless its a commercial cleaner, its going to be weak in the knees and simply not be able to be the great all-around cleaner that you have been told that you need.  The cleaner I use is vinegar. Yes, vinegar!  I use white distilled vinegar for a broad range of cleaning tasks, and many of them involve cutting heavy grease on the stove top and in other areas of the kitchen where cleaning is often the biggest issue for us humanoids.

White vinegar cuts grease, it does not have added chemicals, its easy on the hands and it is all natural. I use vinegar full strength when working with grease on the stove or on walls or in the bathroom.  A few days ago I used vinegar to clean the inside trim and dashboard of my work vehicle and the speed with which the vinegar cleaned was amazing.  The nice thing is I know its clean without any chemical residue that I or my passengers are breathing or coming into contact with.

White vinegar is a great cleaner on

• stove tops
• refrigerators
• kitchen counters
• windows
• bathroom cleaning-great cleaner for ceramic surfaces
• dissolves hard water stains on plumbing
• is a great polish for chrome or polished surfaces
• vehicle tires
• inside the car on trim and dashboard

Now for as great as vinegar is, there are some surfaces where it may not work so well.  One o these are wood surfaces or porous surfaces.  Vinegar works best on nonpourous surfaces. What makes it work so well is its acidity.  Many greases and fats respond well to acids to lift and carry them away.

A big plus for vinegar as a cleaning agent is its price.  Bought in gallon jugs, you can have a good supply of the cleaner on hand for a fraction of the cost of industrial or commercial cleaners.  Plus, your home is not littered with 20-letter compounds under your sink.

Vinegar is a great cleaner.  It can go a long way towards giving you a home free from so many harsh chemicals. With the advent of consumer biochemistry in the late 40’s and 50’s, a broad range of new chemicals were discovered and used for cleaning…..but truly, we really never needed much more than baking soda, scrubbers, bleach, ammonia, and some good old elbow grease.  I now use vinegar almost exclusively as a cleaner in my kitchen, and I have not looked back.  Vinegar is a great cleaner in the kitchen and home. When I am not using vinegar as a cleaner, I am using baking soda.  But don’t get me started on baking soda!

Have a great weekend Miss Callabash, wherever you are….

Without and Beyond Belief

This post began as a small rant on Facebook and then grew far too big to even consider keeping there.  Instead, I have placed it here for those who find these kinds of ramblings to be of interest.  -P.

Years ago I realized the problem I had with religion….ANY religion was the belief part.  It wasn’t really some personal problem or an ego thing or….it was a lot simpler.  I grew up willing to ask myself is belief even necessary? I mean, what if you just started from the premise that instead of believing, you simply inquired about the things that most folks have a a belief about?  I realized that in doing so, I could solve any nagging issues about whether something was real or not.  And mind you, some things simply do not lend themselves to this form of authentication or checking out.

But a lot of things do.  And most people do not know how to go about authenticating their experience.  When it comes to that, humans are mostly all thumbs.  Or rather, they have been trained to be like that.  And why?  Because one serious problem or drawback when swimming in the waters of belief, I have found, has been the hand-in-glove tendency for beliefs to require you to cleave to an authority figure of SOME kind.  Whether priest, priestess, mullah, or pastor, these two things tend to go hand in hand. And that is really a problem.  Why?  Because when it comes to authority, and spiritual things, being able to listen to the authority within is really important.  And a LOT of religions tend to weed that one out.  A LOT.  Oh yes, people will say that they do listen within, but its all within

So what is forgotten in all of this is what I have come to observe is that the gateway of all experience, all of it, is within each of us.  It then makes sense that this gateway must be clear…..but all-thumbs human does not know what this means or entails.  Like a glass darkly, we distort so much within ourselves because its just now….prepared well.  And look at our brothers and sisters walking the earth. God bless them, but we are all a mess inside.  A mess.  So much so that the only way through a life inwardly is by following what we “believe” is an accurate and unimpeachable authority to follow hoping it will not lead us into a ditch.

But even the grasping for a teacher is itself a belief, if not deeper down and less noticeable.  We all have our flavors.  And yes, this will upset people, but when you bite into the deeper unpresupposed, naked, and radiant truth that stands before us. The teachers who got it will be known for how deeply they partook of it and were able to convey some important aspects of it back to us, the great unwashed, the unseeing, the ignorant, the untouched by the great and brilliant white light of this space where some of us have been known to reach.  Our belief also turn our most important teachers into gods or very nearly so.  They did it with Jesus.  It is now without a question that he was God.  Mary was argued over in the early church and those who said she was a woman who gave birth to a man (yes, this happened) were pushed out into the wilderness (literally) and the flaming tires of the term “heretic” were tossed around their necks.  This left these people at odd-ends to say the least….so powerful was this desire and drive and belief.  The belief.  The belief.  Oh the belief!

But what we do not talk about much is that our books on this man are all cherry picked for us by people who lived thousands of years ago.  We say the teachings are perennial and thus do not change….and this is funny to me because I know that as humans, we have a lot yet to get right.  We are ourselves unfinished and thus our own wisdom and passion and intellect and how we use our minds and our souls to grasp reality and the divine cosmos are all in the process of becoming.  We made a lot of assumptions two thousands years ago about what we thought was right and not right about what that man taught.  And you know what? Buried in these heretical books I have found, for my own use, incredible gems of what I call the “Apex” teachings of Jesus.  They were dumped I suspect because the people could not understand them.  And so we got the KJV (King James Version) with all of its subsequent sub-versions that further push the interpretation further and further afield.

So this begs the question…..if the path is through yourself, then why not polish those parts and find the place within where the teachings can become manifest.  Or known.  Or felt. Or experienced.  Directly.  Why not?  Just because you don’t believe it is possible is by no means any kind of test for the validity of my statement.  It is itself what the rest of what religion has become, which has been a hijacking of our ability to think not just in a reasoning way, but in a deeper more spiritual way….which is much more free than the rather cramped quarters my brothers and sisters in various and sundry religions have.  I will say that my freedom has allowed me direct access to some things that I read about from yogis and saints.  Its true.  And isn’t this what we all seek?  Or am I wrong? Why do we seek it, then, through belief? What I have access to is not through a form of belief, but through direct experience.

To get there means you have to take incredible leaps.  They are not leaps of belief, though.  They are leaps that have to do with knowing how to use your insides.  It means undoing limiting beliefs.  Perhaps there IS a belief that does need to be held to until the rewiring is complete, and that is that within each of us is the means to know the divine reality directly.  Its interesting that its the Native American holy men and women who were on to what this was all about.  They would pray that they would become like a “hollow bone.”  This meant, obviously, that they ceased reflecting on what they thought they were experiencing and just let it flow through them.  They did not distort or interpret the information.  This, though, is incomprehensible as an experience for anyone who has significant distortive material in the way.  The leap, then, is a very real one. It is one more of faith, than of belief. The difference?  Belief will land you where you expect based on what the belief tells you or requires of you, but faith will land you in a place completely unexpected, unmade in your mind, and thus also quite possibly free from as many of the tethers of belief than would have happened otherwise.  If you are lucky. And this, I say, is not based on something I believe as much as what I have to this point experienced.  Now my interpretation could be faulty, yes, because even I do not escape all belief.  Belief is itself so incredibly pernicious a thing that it lies like dark fry (small fish) in the rivers and creeks of our subconscious.  The deeper you go, the more you find.  The fish sometimes make us think that our purpose is to fish those streams when in fact our purpose is in knowing that we are to join the river with the ocean that is in our being.  And what is there?  Our teachers have recalled these places for us and some of us have reported back about it.  One thing is for sure; belief is not required.

So through all of this even from a young age, I felt like there was a way through the dogma and from leaving my brain in the parking lot.  It has led to opening the heart wider and using the mind differently.  It has sparked immense creativity.  It has also led to deep swings from bliss to depression. Its been difficult, not easy, and also easy as pie when I can get “it” right.  I am plumbing my own depths as much as I am learning to let go of the things that limit me.  Like belief.  And to be fair, there are more beliefs to let go.  But once you let go of the big ones, the smaller ones, the day-to-day ones are what are left, or were for me.  This is where some of the most practical inner work has been done and it is also the hardest since it lies closest to the ego and our sense of self. Or my self.

And this self does not cotton to the thought of being obliterated…..even as it has offered itself up for obliteration on a daily basis and have only found that the grain gets ground ever finer….

Some believe the way to God is by destroying the ego.  Some believe that we are fallen and have no chance of ever getting up on our own. There are beliefs that we are not good enough individually, and also that there is some enemy out there.  I have sen these beliefs tear apart families.  I have seen people brainwashed by belief, and some of them have been in my own close family.  And the effect has been incredibly destructive.  And painful. And, like Buddha, I suppose, I ask myself about the way out of this suffering Way.  And for me?  The way is partly through the abandonment of belief in favor of going to find that thing that I feel tempted to believe. Doing this requires humility, a kind of emotional plasticity, and a willingness to be completely, absolutely WRONG…..and then being willing to set about changing it, or at least being on duty while the change is being made (largely by the higher self).  All of this is much too detailed a thing for me to hit on specifically and not turn this into a small book, so I keep to the edges and to the docks and away from the sailing spaces and oceans so deep and ineffable.  🙂

So this has meant that instead of believing in God, I have been impelled to just go find this thing. How do you do that? This gives rise to questions, naturally, very big ones, but we save the questions for later and address them one by one carefully.  Yes, there is a way to know about God and death and all the questions that dog us and keep us up at night or terrify us as we grow up enough to know, holy shit, we are each going to DIE!   In my mind as a youngster I asked the question.  How would one go about finding out what lies beyond that transition?  I mean, without any meaningful information, we are all just guessing, right?  It is this kind of inquiry that has led me to some interesting places.  When I was 9 years old I figured that the best way to deal with the fear that grips each of us here about our demise here physically, is to learn about what might lie on the other side of that place, if there is anything.  The advantage seemed to be a win-win.  If there was nothing, then at least we would know and we would also know that this is all there is.  Or, we would find something more and we would know more about the conditions of that other place.

What I found was that bit by bit, I got my questions answered.  In a myriad of ways.  There is enough there to fill a book, so I will save you, but I will say that as you seek, you will tend to find.  That old maxim holds true.
What’s interesting is that within some dogma, there is a limiting belief that essentially says that one should not go messing with the powers that involve finding this out.  It is, itself, a kind of straw man argument, which essentially creates a false premise from the beginning just to knock it down, as though it was real in the first place.  But it, like so much, is a belief.  And belief has the power to toss all kinds of adrenaline into your body in order to create the illusion of fear and dread, which tells you that this is a path you ought not go. But its belief that does it.  Most people just never bother to unravel the packaging as deeply as this to find out that this is the substance of these things.  Ego and belief dive all the way down into the marrow of our most primal of places, places many do not ever bother to even plumb, yet exist and all of this stuff goes deep, one as deep as the other, and is part of the tyranny of belief that says be will be cast into everlasting hell-fire or that we need to destroy ego in order to know God.  Both, just as ridiculous and impossible as the other.

I found many years after this journey that there was another person who had advocated what I was advocating decades before I even knew who he was, or that he held just such a position.  It was U.G. Krishnamurti who spoke and taught a version of this idea that he called “The Pathless Path.”  When I first read about it, it felt cold and sterile until I caught on to what he was trying to say.  And of course U.G. liked to shock people.  He was also a curmudgeon.  But behind all of this was something very similar. Look within, inquire, and learn about the contents of who you are and dare to go deep.  Most people are frightened to death to go deep for fear of what they will find.  Doing this deep delving is the same as the shamanic shadow work and also the same thing that Carl Jung advocated, which was turning the unknown into knowledge, into awareness.  Shadow work is a healing experience that relieves us all of the neurosis that besets us and our loved ones who seek to find purchase on the soil of our common shores together. When we do this, we make the dark into light, and the dream into wakefulness.  We also move the subconscious into conscious awareness.  We raise the submerged lands within the self out into full awareness.  And what happens is that the self operates different.  The “machinery” actually changes.  What I have seen is that the light body can become like an incredibly brilliant transfer point for vast amounts of information.  All of this is possible without drugs or even any exotic practices or methods.  The path, which is for another post, is about how the chemistry in the body can actually potentiate awareness and energy so that what was once a weak signal can be boosted.  It is the same thing that we do with probes in deep space.  The process of doing this in the biological framework is one of self discovery.  it does not require belief.  But until you have reached deeply enough into it, it is best not to say what you think all of this is because until you do enough shadow work, you will be heavily laden with belief and this….dear friends….is the great distorter of reality.

This is the way I have gone in my life.  I have sought to erase fear of death by learning what is on the “other side,” and I have sought to know this thing so many want to call “God” and I can tell you that its unimaginably big, so big that we have sought to create demi-gods instead of actually comprehend the full breadth of this being, if you want to call it that.  It is much more accurate to call this being an idea more than a being.  It is an idea that seems to have sprung self-made into being….and it has spawned endless creative enterprises.  Just endless and incredibly various.

The world I have discovered in this place of non-belief has been quite incredible.  It has shown me just how incredible we are, and that there is so much more than most people realize.  It has not led me to some vacuous place, but to realizations that I may not have ever reached otherwise. And the difference?  I am closer than I have ever been to the stuff of the universe.  I am closer to my own inner depths.  I am also able to look more clearly at my own junk and work with it.  Do I have illusions?  I do.  This is a peeling away of the material, this is true.  It does not leave me empty and naked.  it just leaves me unafraid of being empty and naked.  The nakedness is about my own shame and empty is itself a state that sometimes is useful for understanding so many things. To know the new, to really know the newness of some state or experience or idea, you have to really let yourself be empty in order to not presuppose anything, to prejudice the material with your own suppositions about what you think you are experiencing.

This began as a post on Facebook, and it grew to be much too big.  I also have friends who are themselves quite dipped in the river of belief, too much so to make a post of this order possible in such a forum.  So I put it here instead.  Besides, Facebook is the realm of the sound-bite.  Even here, on WordPress, posts are most often under a thousand characters.  I find that by exceeding this amount, I get the seekers who are most serious about what it is they are doing.  And it is this that I like….a perennial engagement amongst common minds and souls who are seeking something of themselves in what they find seemingly “out there” only to find  whisp of the infinite staring back at them in the mirror and winking……a knowing that we could all take off our masks and we’d all be more interconnected than we had previously thought….born of something the same yet also individual and one.  What a crazy way to start things off, right?