Hello my friends,
I'm afraid my blogs will be spasmodic over the next few weeks because I am on a teaching tour in the USA. If any of you would like to know where I am going to be and when, pleae visit my website www.spiritteach.net and click on the Seminars/Workshops page
May your God do with you,
Lionel
Wednesday, 29 July 2009
Monday, 27 July 2009
Love and Judgement
It is true to say, I believe, that although we are quick to make excuses to ourselves for our own shortcomings, no-one judges us more harshly. Our judgement of our selves and our own actions is often much too severe and is one of the things that can lead to depression.
The problem at the root of all this is a failure to love ourselves. By that I do not mean we should become vain and full of conceit but we should try harder to understand who and what we are. Before really being able to love yourself, you must get to know yourself and you cannot do that properly by focussing just on the physical you. When you look into a mirror, the reflection you see is not really you, but only a small part of you. Most of you remains hidden where physical eyes cannot penetrate. There is only one way to access this vital part of you and that is by learning to be still. The real you whilst being in this world, is not of this world and you must adapt your approach accordingly.
It is important to spend some time alone and it is during these periods you should try to be really still, so that you can look with your inner eyes at the being who only reveals a small part of itself in physical life. The real you is a wonderful person and becoming familiar with her or him in the stillness is the beginning of true self-knowledge. The regular act of becoming acquainted with your true self in this way has remarkable and beneficial effects. Your true persona is released more and more into you physical self, you become calmer and more self-assured and other people begin to notice the change in you and seek your company. You become less impatient, time seems to open up for you in a mysterious way and whereas before, you never seemed to have enough time to do all you wanted, now you seem to have ‘all the time in the world’.
Once you know, then you can love. When you learn to love yourself two things happen. First you are kinder in your self-judgement and second you find it easier to love and understand others. Loving others does not mean you then approve of all they do. No, it is a matter of understanding that nobody is perfect, yet loving them despite their weaknesses. You do not have to condone a rash, foolish or unwholesome act because you love someone. You do not even have to like someone in order to love them. But you do need to understand the operation of universal law. It is so arranged that payment will be extracted in one form or another for all negative acts or thoughts. Those who truly love, instead of condemning, try to support the individual so they have the strength to deal successfully with what is demanded of them.
One of the most difficult tasks we are set in our lives is that of avoiding the temptation to be judgemental. The Native Americans say that until we have walked a mile in another’s moccasins, we cannot know them. It is a very wise observation and one we do well to recognise. Because the yardstick we use to measure the behaviour of others, is limited and greatly influenced by our own, very imperfect experience, we cannot possibly be objective. Therefore we cannot possibly be fair because there is no way we can take into account all the relevant factors that went into bringing the individual concerned to the point in life they have reached. Even if we know a great many details about their background, upbringing and the circumstances of their birth, it is still an incomplete picture.
Were it in some magical way possible to know every thing, every person and every experience on earth that has shaped the person concerned, your knowledge would still only be partial. You see we have lived before - all of us. We came to our earthly bodies from elsewhere, bringing with us the accumulated experiences that earlier went into making us as individuals. So though we may think we know all about what has happened to them on earth, we can never know what happened to them before they got here.
The problem at the root of all this is a failure to love ourselves. By that I do not mean we should become vain and full of conceit but we should try harder to understand who and what we are. Before really being able to love yourself, you must get to know yourself and you cannot do that properly by focussing just on the physical you. When you look into a mirror, the reflection you see is not really you, but only a small part of you. Most of you remains hidden where physical eyes cannot penetrate. There is only one way to access this vital part of you and that is by learning to be still. The real you whilst being in this world, is not of this world and you must adapt your approach accordingly.
It is important to spend some time alone and it is during these periods you should try to be really still, so that you can look with your inner eyes at the being who only reveals a small part of itself in physical life. The real you is a wonderful person and becoming familiar with her or him in the stillness is the beginning of true self-knowledge. The regular act of becoming acquainted with your true self in this way has remarkable and beneficial effects. Your true persona is released more and more into you physical self, you become calmer and more self-assured and other people begin to notice the change in you and seek your company. You become less impatient, time seems to open up for you in a mysterious way and whereas before, you never seemed to have enough time to do all you wanted, now you seem to have ‘all the time in the world’.
Once you know, then you can love. When you learn to love yourself two things happen. First you are kinder in your self-judgement and second you find it easier to love and understand others. Loving others does not mean you then approve of all they do. No, it is a matter of understanding that nobody is perfect, yet loving them despite their weaknesses. You do not have to condone a rash, foolish or unwholesome act because you love someone. You do not even have to like someone in order to love them. But you do need to understand the operation of universal law. It is so arranged that payment will be extracted in one form or another for all negative acts or thoughts. Those who truly love, instead of condemning, try to support the individual so they have the strength to deal successfully with what is demanded of them.
One of the most difficult tasks we are set in our lives is that of avoiding the temptation to be judgemental. The Native Americans say that until we have walked a mile in another’s moccasins, we cannot know them. It is a very wise observation and one we do well to recognise. Because the yardstick we use to measure the behaviour of others, is limited and greatly influenced by our own, very imperfect experience, we cannot possibly be objective. Therefore we cannot possibly be fair because there is no way we can take into account all the relevant factors that went into bringing the individual concerned to the point in life they have reached. Even if we know a great many details about their background, upbringing and the circumstances of their birth, it is still an incomplete picture.
Were it in some magical way possible to know every thing, every person and every experience on earth that has shaped the person concerned, your knowledge would still only be partial. You see we have lived before - all of us. We came to our earthly bodies from elsewhere, bringing with us the accumulated experiences that earlier went into making us as individuals. So though we may think we know all about what has happened to them on earth, we can never know what happened to them before they got here.
Saturday, 25 July 2009
Words
“In the beginning the word was with God and the word was God …”
Why should the Christian bible begin like this? Are words important? Is the children’s saying, “Sticks and stones may break my bones but names will never hurt me,” really true? Do certain words have power? If so, what sort of power?
Words are the chief form of communication between human beings, whether it is the spoken or the written word. Indeed, other forms of communication, which I think were widely used by the initiated in ancient times, have fallen into disuse, so that words are virtually the only official form of communication today. Why do I say official? What possible ‘unofficial’ forms of communication are there? What about music and painting? Does not a piece of music become a favourite because it “speaks” to us in some special, hidden way? Great painting communicates emotions and feelings that have nothing whatever to do with the pigments used to paint the picture. In ancient times, it is clear that the great Neolithic structures such as Cargnac in France or Stonehenge and Avebury, in England were not merely used for predicting eclipses or as religious centres. I think they were built on special lines of earthly force, called Ley Lines and they were used for transmitting telepathic communication from the initiates in one place, to those in another. I think the Ley Lines were chosen with great care for certain of them aid telepathy more than others.
Feelings! They are the key to all communication. Whatever form communication takes, it evokes a response from the listener, reader or observer. It might be boredom, excitement, joy, love, annoyance, interest, anticipation, the list is endless. The thing is, all these are feelings and our feelings are aroused by many forms of communication, of which words are only one. That does not make words unimportant however, for they are almost the only way in which we communicate our thoughts to one another. You might say, “The fact that words evoke emotional responses means that of course they have power,” and of course you would be right. However, that is not the power I am thinking of.
The writers of Genesis were not the first, nor the last to imply that certain words had great power. Esoteric teachers of all backgrounds have always taught that and consequently those words are a closely guarded secret. Can that be true? I think so and in order to understand why, we need to examine what happens when we speak. As I said earlier, words express thoughts, so one thing that happens when we speak is that thought waves are sent out. The second is sound is created. This means that sound waves move through the air as well. This is how we hear the words of course but we don’t just hear the sound waves, we also feel them as we do the thought waves. The reason music evokes emotional responses is because of the way in which it creates sound waves that either attract or repel us. Words do the same, although, because they are in such common use we think less about the feelings being evoked. We know though, that the same word can have totally different effects depending upon the way it is said. As the old song puts it, “It ain’t what you say it’s the way that you say it.”
Thought waves are much more subtle, but because of this, their effects can be more insidious. We absorb their vibrations subconsciously and whilst our individual minds are normally strong enough to ignore their calls to action, that is not true of everyone and I believe many is the act committed on the instigation of another’s thoughts, without the individual being aware why he or she acted like they did. However, in the instance we are discussing it is sufficient to recognise that every word uttered or written is preceded by a thought. Therefore, we feel the vibration of spoken words in two ways, with our ears, as the sound waves vibrate the air and with our minds, as the thought waves are picked up by that ultra-sensitive instrument. It is for this reason that esoteric teachers have always claimed the spoken word to be the more powerful.
It is interesting to examine also the effect the structure of a language can have on its speakers’ brains. I have read that many scientists believe the reason the Japanese are so good at exploiting other people’s inventions but poor at inventing things themselves, is due to their language. The language contains far more vowels than do European languages, for instance, and it seems that because of this, certain areas of the brain remain undeveloped and they include areas that are used in the inventive process. If speaking a certain language can affect the brain in such a way, it is not surely stretching credulity too far to suggest that words can have other powerful properties.
I believe that such ‘power words’ are such, not because of what they might mean, if indeed they mean anything at all, but due to the sound made in pronouncing them. The way the sound produced vibrates the air, also impacts upon the ultra-sensitivity of the mind and because the mind is part of the eternal us, the spirit, rather than part of the physical body, like the brain, the word possesses what appear to be magical properties. We call something magic because we cannot understand it or how it works. We do the same with unaccountable occurrences or anything that seems to defy the rules we have invented as a result of our imperfect examination and understanding of the natural world and its laws. We call them miracles! Nothing can defy natural law, it is all encompassing and its laws cannot be ignored without serious consequences, but there are also many natural laws about which humanity has not the slightest idea. Magic and miracle tend to be dismissive words, meant to indicate that what has happened is pure chance and the likelihood of it happening again is remote. Nothing happens by chance. As Alexander Pope so perceptively observes in his “Essay on Man,” “All chance is direction which we cannot see.”
I do believe that certain words, pronounced in a particular way, do have great power and because of this should be used with enormous discretion. Most of these words have been lost from the vocabulary with the onset of materialism and the relegation of our inner selves to be mere bystanders in our physical lives. I think it is likely that the word “God,” in its original Hebrew, is one such power word. Hence it’s use in the opening sentence of the bible. It translates into English as Jehovah but I believe there are few if any people around today who know how to pronounce it in its form as a power word. If there are any, then they do well to keep their knowledge to themselves because this world of ours is in enough trouble due to the misuse of power, without adding to it.
Why should the Christian bible begin like this? Are words important? Is the children’s saying, “Sticks and stones may break my bones but names will never hurt me,” really true? Do certain words have power? If so, what sort of power?
Words are the chief form of communication between human beings, whether it is the spoken or the written word. Indeed, other forms of communication, which I think were widely used by the initiated in ancient times, have fallen into disuse, so that words are virtually the only official form of communication today. Why do I say official? What possible ‘unofficial’ forms of communication are there? What about music and painting? Does not a piece of music become a favourite because it “speaks” to us in some special, hidden way? Great painting communicates emotions and feelings that have nothing whatever to do with the pigments used to paint the picture. In ancient times, it is clear that the great Neolithic structures such as Cargnac in France or Stonehenge and Avebury, in England were not merely used for predicting eclipses or as religious centres. I think they were built on special lines of earthly force, called Ley Lines and they were used for transmitting telepathic communication from the initiates in one place, to those in another. I think the Ley Lines were chosen with great care for certain of them aid telepathy more than others.
Feelings! They are the key to all communication. Whatever form communication takes, it evokes a response from the listener, reader or observer. It might be boredom, excitement, joy, love, annoyance, interest, anticipation, the list is endless. The thing is, all these are feelings and our feelings are aroused by many forms of communication, of which words are only one. That does not make words unimportant however, for they are almost the only way in which we communicate our thoughts to one another. You might say, “The fact that words evoke emotional responses means that of course they have power,” and of course you would be right. However, that is not the power I am thinking of.
The writers of Genesis were not the first, nor the last to imply that certain words had great power. Esoteric teachers of all backgrounds have always taught that and consequently those words are a closely guarded secret. Can that be true? I think so and in order to understand why, we need to examine what happens when we speak. As I said earlier, words express thoughts, so one thing that happens when we speak is that thought waves are sent out. The second is sound is created. This means that sound waves move through the air as well. This is how we hear the words of course but we don’t just hear the sound waves, we also feel them as we do the thought waves. The reason music evokes emotional responses is because of the way in which it creates sound waves that either attract or repel us. Words do the same, although, because they are in such common use we think less about the feelings being evoked. We know though, that the same word can have totally different effects depending upon the way it is said. As the old song puts it, “It ain’t what you say it’s the way that you say it.”
Thought waves are much more subtle, but because of this, their effects can be more insidious. We absorb their vibrations subconsciously and whilst our individual minds are normally strong enough to ignore their calls to action, that is not true of everyone and I believe many is the act committed on the instigation of another’s thoughts, without the individual being aware why he or she acted like they did. However, in the instance we are discussing it is sufficient to recognise that every word uttered or written is preceded by a thought. Therefore, we feel the vibration of spoken words in two ways, with our ears, as the sound waves vibrate the air and with our minds, as the thought waves are picked up by that ultra-sensitive instrument. It is for this reason that esoteric teachers have always claimed the spoken word to be the more powerful.
It is interesting to examine also the effect the structure of a language can have on its speakers’ brains. I have read that many scientists believe the reason the Japanese are so good at exploiting other people’s inventions but poor at inventing things themselves, is due to their language. The language contains far more vowels than do European languages, for instance, and it seems that because of this, certain areas of the brain remain undeveloped and they include areas that are used in the inventive process. If speaking a certain language can affect the brain in such a way, it is not surely stretching credulity too far to suggest that words can have other powerful properties.
I believe that such ‘power words’ are such, not because of what they might mean, if indeed they mean anything at all, but due to the sound made in pronouncing them. The way the sound produced vibrates the air, also impacts upon the ultra-sensitivity of the mind and because the mind is part of the eternal us, the spirit, rather than part of the physical body, like the brain, the word possesses what appear to be magical properties. We call something magic because we cannot understand it or how it works. We do the same with unaccountable occurrences or anything that seems to defy the rules we have invented as a result of our imperfect examination and understanding of the natural world and its laws. We call them miracles! Nothing can defy natural law, it is all encompassing and its laws cannot be ignored without serious consequences, but there are also many natural laws about which humanity has not the slightest idea. Magic and miracle tend to be dismissive words, meant to indicate that what has happened is pure chance and the likelihood of it happening again is remote. Nothing happens by chance. As Alexander Pope so perceptively observes in his “Essay on Man,” “All chance is direction which we cannot see.”
I do believe that certain words, pronounced in a particular way, do have great power and because of this should be used with enormous discretion. Most of these words have been lost from the vocabulary with the onset of materialism and the relegation of our inner selves to be mere bystanders in our physical lives. I think it is likely that the word “God,” in its original Hebrew, is one such power word. Hence it’s use in the opening sentence of the bible. It translates into English as Jehovah but I believe there are few if any people around today who know how to pronounce it in its form as a power word. If there are any, then they do well to keep their knowledge to themselves because this world of ours is in enough trouble due to the misuse of power, without adding to it.
Wednesday, 22 July 2009
“Now We See …”
“For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: Now, I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known.”
This famous quotation from St. Paul’s letters to the Corinthians and how it is generally understood by Christians, is yet another example of how his words have been twisted by theologians. Paul knew more about the nature of spirit, our structure of mind, body and spirit and the spirit world after death, than any of the disciples of the Nazarene. Yet his words have been used to prop up the fallacy that a) the physical body is resurrected into heaven and b) every one of us must wait in our graves until some imaginary trumpet sounds and we all go to spirit together. That is if we are all Christians!
The “see through a glass darkly” letter has been used to uphold the idea of a vengeful God who punishes us ‘miserable sinners’ when we arrive in spirit eventually. How we are supposed to equate this with a God of love has always been beyond my power to understand. Read with an open mind, unsullied by Christian dogma, this letter is an explanation that while we are here on earth, our spirit, which is our true self, is unable to operate freely because of the restrictions imposed by a material world and a material body and there are sound reasons for this.
We have inklings of the power and love of spirit at certain times in our lives but most things about spirit, what we are and what eventually becomes of us are shrouded by these restrictions I mentioned. We only see part of the picture. It is like looking through a darkened mirror, which is exactly what Paul is saying. He goes on however, to say that “then shall I know even as I am known.” In other words when we lose the constriction of a physical body and can be our true, free, spirit selves in a world of the spirit, we shall understand the reasons why we chose to come to earth, why we ended up living the life we did, what spiritual lessons we learned from it and the fact that all are eternal spirits, part of the Great Spirit. In addition, others will be able to know and understand us as we really are. Here on earth, we are able to hide certain aspects of our character from other people but there we can hide nothing – all is revealed.
“By your light shall you be known” and that light is bright or dim dependent upon the way we have lived our lives on earth. It matters not whether we have been what the world considers good or bad, what matters is how we have used the opportunities life has presented us with to be of service to our fellow creatures, human and animal. Have we given service to others or have we been totally selfish? Of course we are human and none of us can be good all the time. There will be occasions when we have erred, done what we shouldn’t have done or failed to do what we should. The occurrence itself is less important than the outcome. Have we learned from the error? Are we trying harder to avoid making the same mistake? Sometimes when we realise our mistakes, we are filled with remorse and become depressed and withdrawn. This is unfortunate, for rather than being so, we should be asking God to give us the opportunity to make amends so that we can show that we have truly learned our lesson. There is no point in depressing ourselves because that drives us within and makes us introverted. Then it is all the more difficult to recognise an opportunity to make amends when it appears. Do not fear that you may not be given another opportunity or that God will desert you. You are eternal, you are part of the Great Spirit and as such will never be abandoned, will always be forgiven and always presented with opportunities to make up for your transgressions.
Time is part of the magic of life. Today is of itself; tomorrow is a new day, with new opportunities and new challenges. We should try hard not to carry into the new day the rubbish from yesterday. What happened yesterday, try to leave with yesterday and rejoice in the dawn of a new day with all its promise and excitement. Don’t spoil the dawn with regrets. Look forward to tomorrow in that spirit and the ‘problems’ of today will assume their true perspective. You will find, as a result, you are more relaxed and in that relaxation ideas will come to you, ideas to take you forward, that you would never have when you are tense, anxious and worried.
Part of the challenge of physical life is that we can only see with partial sight. Our spiritual eyes are clouded deliberately in order to force us to work harder to break through the dimness, even just a little, and espy the glory from which we came and to which we will inevitably return.
Tuesday, 21 July 2009
Impossible?
Whether physically, mentally or spiritually, we can only grow and progress if we reach beyond our grasp. We need to extend ourselves. A good starting place is to remind ourselves that anything we can imagine is possible. The imagination is what has transformed our world and transformed the lives of everybody living in it. No matter how impossible a dream you imagine might seem, you have the ability to realise it if only you will understand nothing is impossible. Impossible is a word associated purely with physical life. The spirit knows of no such word. As the great Albert Einstein once said, “Unless your first idea is impossible you will achieve nothing new.”
Impossibility is in the mind. We place unnecessary restrictions upon ourselves because we listen too closely to the voice of the ego instead of to the ‘still small voice’ from our inner self. Just think for a moment about what our lives would be like now had individuals not defied their ego when it whispered “impossible”. We would have no fires in our homes, no running water, no glass in the windows, certainly not telephone, radio, TV or computer. There would be no motor cars or aeroplanes, buses or taxis. In other words we would still be living in caves.
Just imagine if Alexander Graham Bell had given up after ninety-nine unsuccessful experiments and not moved on to number one hundred that gave us the telephone. What if the Wright brothers had refused the challenge to build a machine that could fly? What if NASA had told President Kennedy that putting a man on the moon was just a wild dream and quite beyond human ingenuity? In his great poem “If”, Rudyard Kipling says, “… If you can stand quite out of fashion, like a rusty mail in monumental mockery … Then you’ll be a man my son.” Conventional wisdom or fashion has held back human progress in all fields, including the spiritual. Only when an individual has been courageous enough to defy it has the next stride forward been made.
How has conventional wisdom restricted spiritual progress? In this field, conventional wisdom is the established churches, temples and monasteries throughout the world. For differing reasons, each of the established religions refuses to encourage people to believe that they are eternal spiritual beings WITHOUT EXCEPTION. They always hedge their claims for immortality around their desire to increase and or retain members of their particular faith. Consequently it is only when an individual appears who is blessed with exceptional powers of the spirit, that the misleading nature of the claims of those religions is exposed. What happens then? Fear! In their fear, partly of the unknown but chiefly of losing their power and control over people, the religions condemn the person concerned and eventually succeed in having him or her killed.
Fear is another tool of the ego. It is one of the strongest ways in which it exerts its control over each one of us. When Franklyn Roosevelt said “We have nothing to fear but fear itself,” he was stating a truism. Refuse to be cowed by fear or “the impossible” and we set ourselves free of the cloying attentions of the ego. We become, as we should be, spiritual beings living temporarily in a physical world but with all the enormous powers of the spirit at our finger tips: Power to co-create with the Great Spirit Himself, because there is a portion of Him within us all. Our centre, our true self, is pure spirit and is indistinguishable in the power it can access, from God or the Great Spirit, Infinite Intelligence, or any one of a hundred names we have given the Creator over millennia. We are not only immortal we can be all powerful too but in the highest sense of that word. Restrictions on our access to that incredible power are only those imposed by love and concern for its effects on other people. Only when we are sure others will be adversely affected should we pause in our pursuit of new knowledge. Even then, the wider view urges us to continue.
We all know the arguments put forward against the use of atomic energy in warfare and many roundly condemn those scientists involved in the Manhattan Project. However, remember Hitler had also embarked upon the same project and how far should we blame the inventor for the use to which others put his invention? One person or a group of people should surely not be held responsible for the immoral actions of others in the way their invention is used. Humanity has always looked at ways to use new inventions as weapons first because we have not evolved far enough beyond our animal beginnings. We have listened too much to the siren voice of the ego. The invention of gunpowder produced the firearm and the bullet but it also produced the beautiful spectacle of the firework display. Atomic energy has produced many medical benefits that would not have been possible had Einstein foreseen earlier the use to which his discovery of relativity would be put or Oppenheimer refused to invent the bomb. The internal combustion engine was responsible for the tank and the bomber but also for the motor car and the airliner. The use of gas, both manufactured and natural, gave birth to the unspeakable horrors of Belsen but also to preparation of our Sunday lunch.
No, we should accept no restrictions on the power of the human mind to invent and imagine but we should insist upon the same freedom where spiritual knowledge is concerned. Those having religious power, mostly know of the great power of the spirit but refuse to speak about it openly because they say people are too undeveloped to use such knowledge wisely. This in my view is pure humbug. Without the opportunity to extend our spiritual grasp by learning of these powers, how will we ever develop the moral responsibility to use all Gods gifts wisely? That our spiritual evolution as human beings lags so far behind our physical and mental evolution is not only a tragedy but also a condemnation of generations of manipulators who called themselves ‘spiritual leaders’. Restriction is negative and negativity produces darkness. Only when we are allowed to see the positive benefits of freedom, true freedom with responsibility, will we progress spiritually beyond the primitive stage we are at and release the light of the spirit into the world in its full glory.
Impossibility is in the mind. We place unnecessary restrictions upon ourselves because we listen too closely to the voice of the ego instead of to the ‘still small voice’ from our inner self. Just think for a moment about what our lives would be like now had individuals not defied their ego when it whispered “impossible”. We would have no fires in our homes, no running water, no glass in the windows, certainly not telephone, radio, TV or computer. There would be no motor cars or aeroplanes, buses or taxis. In other words we would still be living in caves.
Just imagine if Alexander Graham Bell had given up after ninety-nine unsuccessful experiments and not moved on to number one hundred that gave us the telephone. What if the Wright brothers had refused the challenge to build a machine that could fly? What if NASA had told President Kennedy that putting a man on the moon was just a wild dream and quite beyond human ingenuity? In his great poem “If”, Rudyard Kipling says, “… If you can stand quite out of fashion, like a rusty mail in monumental mockery … Then you’ll be a man my son.” Conventional wisdom or fashion has held back human progress in all fields, including the spiritual. Only when an individual has been courageous enough to defy it has the next stride forward been made.
How has conventional wisdom restricted spiritual progress? In this field, conventional wisdom is the established churches, temples and monasteries throughout the world. For differing reasons, each of the established religions refuses to encourage people to believe that they are eternal spiritual beings WITHOUT EXCEPTION. They always hedge their claims for immortality around their desire to increase and or retain members of their particular faith. Consequently it is only when an individual appears who is blessed with exceptional powers of the spirit, that the misleading nature of the claims of those religions is exposed. What happens then? Fear! In their fear, partly of the unknown but chiefly of losing their power and control over people, the religions condemn the person concerned and eventually succeed in having him or her killed.
Fear is another tool of the ego. It is one of the strongest ways in which it exerts its control over each one of us. When Franklyn Roosevelt said “We have nothing to fear but fear itself,” he was stating a truism. Refuse to be cowed by fear or “the impossible” and we set ourselves free of the cloying attentions of the ego. We become, as we should be, spiritual beings living temporarily in a physical world but with all the enormous powers of the spirit at our finger tips: Power to co-create with the Great Spirit Himself, because there is a portion of Him within us all. Our centre, our true self, is pure spirit and is indistinguishable in the power it can access, from God or the Great Spirit, Infinite Intelligence, or any one of a hundred names we have given the Creator over millennia. We are not only immortal we can be all powerful too but in the highest sense of that word. Restrictions on our access to that incredible power are only those imposed by love and concern for its effects on other people. Only when we are sure others will be adversely affected should we pause in our pursuit of new knowledge. Even then, the wider view urges us to continue.
We all know the arguments put forward against the use of atomic energy in warfare and many roundly condemn those scientists involved in the Manhattan Project. However, remember Hitler had also embarked upon the same project and how far should we blame the inventor for the use to which others put his invention? One person or a group of people should surely not be held responsible for the immoral actions of others in the way their invention is used. Humanity has always looked at ways to use new inventions as weapons first because we have not evolved far enough beyond our animal beginnings. We have listened too much to the siren voice of the ego. The invention of gunpowder produced the firearm and the bullet but it also produced the beautiful spectacle of the firework display. Atomic energy has produced many medical benefits that would not have been possible had Einstein foreseen earlier the use to which his discovery of relativity would be put or Oppenheimer refused to invent the bomb. The internal combustion engine was responsible for the tank and the bomber but also for the motor car and the airliner. The use of gas, both manufactured and natural, gave birth to the unspeakable horrors of Belsen but also to preparation of our Sunday lunch.
No, we should accept no restrictions on the power of the human mind to invent and imagine but we should insist upon the same freedom where spiritual knowledge is concerned. Those having religious power, mostly know of the great power of the spirit but refuse to speak about it openly because they say people are too undeveloped to use such knowledge wisely. This in my view is pure humbug. Without the opportunity to extend our spiritual grasp by learning of these powers, how will we ever develop the moral responsibility to use all Gods gifts wisely? That our spiritual evolution as human beings lags so far behind our physical and mental evolution is not only a tragedy but also a condemnation of generations of manipulators who called themselves ‘spiritual leaders’. Restriction is negative and negativity produces darkness. Only when we are allowed to see the positive benefits of freedom, true freedom with responsibility, will we progress spiritually beyond the primitive stage we are at and release the light of the spirit into the world in its full glory.
Monday, 20 July 2009
Be at Peace
Try to be still for a while today. Make a pact with yourself that for 15 minutes or so you are not going to allow anything or anyone to disturb you. Turn off the phones, sit somewhere in the house where you know you won’t be interrupted and prepare to enjoy the peace which is at the heart of you.Prepare to link with that pure light that is at the heart of every individual, the light that surely is the ‘light of the world,’ if only we did not hide it so effectively. At your centre, you are pure spirit, pure light and the imperfections you have convinced yourself you have are God’s way of teaching us to make our light even brighter. We all have outer imperfections and when we deal with and overcome them we become spiritually stronger. Just as we need physical exercise to develop strong muscles and a healthy body, so we need spiritual exercise to develop stronger spiritual muscles and a healthy spiritual body. Stronger spiritual muscles are reflected in the light we project from our inner core and it grows brighter the more we fight to overcome our imperfections by helping others in whatever way our gifts allow us to.
By linking regularly with that inner light, you become more aware of your total being – mind, body and spirit. The peace that comes when you are truly still enables the light to manifest itself to you and also provides you with added spiritual strength. It seems anomalous I know but it is true nonetheless. Stillness creates great inner strength. It also helps to reinforce your physical organs and enables you to cope with stress. If you are particularly stressed in your job or your relationship, by regularly seeking inner stillness you will find the stress affects you less and less. After all, what is stress but a tightening of the nerves because there appears to be no time to sort out problems; stillness helps you find all the time in the world. You will also find other people begin to notice a change in you. The stillness you seek regularly is reflected in an aura of great peace around you and people sense it. They want to share it and so they seek out your company more than previously. Their inner light is responding to the peace it senses emanating from you. That is why they want to spend more time with you.
There are many good reasons therefore why we should seek to be still on a regular basis. In this modern world there is so much noise and hassle which in themselves create stress without many being aware of its cause. If you want to be healthier, to discover more about you as a holistic being, be able to cope with stress more easily and to help others do the same, then be still. Move out of the cacophony of modern life for just a few minutes and you will never regret it.
Sunday, 19 July 2009
Angels
Are there such things as angels? What are they? What about ‘fallen angels’? Do we all have guardian angels? Will an angel really help me if I’m in trouble? Do they really have wings?Yes, angels are real, they do exist and we should each be grateful that it is so. Were it not for their devotion to humanity, our world would be in an even worse state than it is, for they use their brilliant light to offset the power of darkness. Darkness brought about through humanity’s ignorance of the truth about life. Because so many over the centuries have allowed their egos to dominate their lives and determine their actions, things of the earth have assumed an importance out of all proportion to what their role should be in the eternal life of the spirit. Angels have dedicated themselves to saving us from ourselves.
Unlike our loved ones in spirit, who wish to help individuals in their family, angels are spirits devoted to helping mankind in general. Of course in helping mankind, it is inevitable that they help individuals too, for what is humanity but the sum total of individuals. Angels sacrifice a great deal in order to carry out their chosen service to us. They are highly evolved spirit beings who have attained great advancement in the spiritual world. Their bodies vibrate at a frequency way in excess of our own and the light they emit would blind us were we able to gaze upon it as it really is. The light they bring with them to earth has been modified so as not to harm us. In coming to help us, they willingly give up the delightful surroundings of their homes in spirit and subject themselves to the gross, cloying atmosphere of this physical planet. In order to draw close to us they must slow down the vibration of their bodies to match that of the earth, as well modify their light and this is a painful experience for them. This is a measure of their devotion.
Fallen angels are a figment of the overactive imaginations of medieval religious zealots and the term is, I believe, an insult to those dear blessed ones who so selflessly offer to help us extricate ourselves from the mess we have created on this beautiful planet of ours. If one is kind to those who invented the term, it is their way of pointing out that throughout God’s kingdom, for every positive power there is also a negative one. It is their description of the powers of darkness. Viewed from that angle, it is a warning to us that spiritual darkness is a fact of which we should be fully aware. The saving grace is that when light is focussed on darkness of any description, it just dissolves and this is exactly what angels have devoted themselves to achieving.
Do I have a guardian angel? You, as we all do, have a guardian; someone devoted to serving and protecting you who has been with you since before you were born. In their devotion and commitment to service, they are very similar to angels but theirs is a role involving a single human being. I do not believe they therefore place themselves in the same category as angels. It was your guardian with whom you discussed your reason and purpose in coming to earth and they try, throughout our earthly lives, to prompt us to fulfil those. It is your guardian who will help you review your life on earth when you have returned once more to the spirit world. They are very important people to us and they love us with a devotion beyond our imagining. Theirs truly is unconditional love.
Will an angel help us if we are in trouble? It depends upon the trouble. Our loved ones in spirit and our guardian will be the first to bring help when we are in trouble and they can help us a great deal if only we will listen to their counsel with our inner ears. Occasionally, it seems that we become mired in an ever deepening morass of trouble. We appear to be surrounded with darkness, into which it seems no light can penetrate. We feel utterly deserted and at our wits end. When we are truly desperate in this way and in our desperation look outwards, forgetting self just for a little while, when we cry out in our pain and anguish that is when angels come to help. They will never stand by and let us fall deeper into the quagmire and their light and power is much stronger than that of our loved ones or our guardian. When it seems we have been deserted by everyone and everything and have nowhere to turn; that is when angels come to our aid as individuals. They truly are messengers of God, carrying out His loving wishes.
Do they have wings? I don’t believe so. For those who have been privileged to gaze upon them, their light is so bright, even in its modified state, that no clear outline of their shape is discernable. They clearly can move effortlessly from place to place without walking or any of the normal human ways of moving. These I believe, are what has led people to presume angels have wings. In spirit each of us can move from place to place merely by an act of will, for it is a world of the mind, a world of thought. We just think about a certain place and, hey presto, there we are! It is small wonder therefore that this ability has been assumed by ignorant humanity to require wings.
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