Check it out for yourself...
It is a simple fact of modern living that the vast majority of what we learn is long removed from its original source. A great deal of what we are taught comes from books or online sources that someone else has put together from the work of someone else who got it from someone else etc. Added to this is the fact that so much of our daily 'experience' comes through external media such as phone calls, texts, tweets, email, the web, TV, newspapers etc, hence very little of it comes from direct personal contact between the natural worlds and ourselves.
The following items are a series of short exercises and fun things to try, that are designed to give one the opportunity to have a direct, personal, 'hands on' experience of certain ideas, notions and philosophical propositions, so that one can decide for oneself the viability of those ideas, rather than be told by some external 'authority' that this is the case.
The following items are a series of short exercises and fun things to try, that are designed to give one the opportunity to have a direct, personal, 'hands on' experience of certain ideas, notions and philosophical propositions, so that one can decide for oneself the viability of those ideas, rather than be told by some external 'authority' that this is the case.
What are the odds?
Get a hold of a 500 piece jigsaw puzzle. Take out all of the pieces and throw the box lid away so you have no way of knowing exactly what the final result should be.
Then blind fold yourself so you can't see anything. Now start putting the puzzle together. Seriously, have a go and find out for yourself how impossible this is, especially as you not only don't know what the final result should be, even if you manged to fit all 500 pieces together, being 'blind' you would never know if you had formed the right picture or not. The odds against just one of our bodies 200,000 different proteins forming up by chance is roughly 50,000,000,000,000,000,000 to 1. Now go and look at yourself in the mirror. Ponder how your heart and lungs, which are two completely different organs and systems have to work in unison to oxygenate your blood and pump it around the body 24/7 without a break to keep you alive–how did that evolve by trial and error?–because one can't work without the other can it? Then look directly into your eyes and think "what am I" - not the body bit, but the conscious entity that looks back at you. How did that arise from an undirected molecular jigsaw? Rediscovering the Web of Life |
Food for thought or thought for food
Nature based wisdom understood that everything in the world was composed of the four elements of Earth, Air, Fire & Water–or solids, liquids, gases & plasma–and that these also constituted the four 'foods' that sustained human life.
Make a trip to the local garbage dump, or simply empty out your own garbage cans. Fill up a plate with rotting food scraps, decomposing meat, putrid items and pour yourself a glass of sour milk or fermenting orange juice. Of course no one in their right mind would eat rotting garbage. When it comes to the 'earth' food of grains, cereals, fruit, vegetables etc we insist on them being as fresh and pure as possible. The same goes for our 'Water' or liquid intake and of course who would want to breathe anything but fresh, unpolluted 'Air'. Some even go as far as being obsessive about the purity and quality of these things, but what about the fourth element of nutrition?, the thoughts, feelings and mental impressions that make up our daily 'fire' or 'energy' food? Is a diet of fear, doubt, lies, guilt, worry, criticism, gossip, vanity and idle titillation really good nutrition for the mind? The truth is that the quality of this level of mental and emotional 'fire' food is what ultimately determines the well being of the rest of our human system. The Astral Light |
It is later than you think!After many years of caring for dying people, it became clear to a palliative care nurse that most felt they had been so busy caught up in all the things they felt the world and others expected of them, that they had missed what the real point of living might have actually been and now had deep regrets about how their lives had turned out.
The single most common regret was, "I wish I'd had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me". As morbid as this might sound, try sitting down and writing your own obituary or eulogy. Its a great exercise to project into the future and take the time to consciously decide what you want the 'summary' of your life and existence to actually be, rather than end up with the one that will occur by 'default', when there will be little or no time left to change it. It is impossible to even make a sandwich without mental projection into the future, why would it be any different to achieve a successful and fulfilling life? Who stole Astrology from the Bible? |
Try telling the truth for a whole day
Its a cold miserable morning, you lost your job yesterday and are a nervous wreck because you haven't been able to eat or sleep worrying about how to pay your bills. Next thing you bump into someone who says "Good morning how are you?"
It is clearly not a good morning and you know from experience that this person you hardly know definitely does not want to know all the sad details about how you are really feeling! Or it is your birthday and the family blind fold you and take you out on to the deck to reveal the 'surprise' they have gone to so much trouble to put together for your birthday. Off comes the blindfold and there it is ... a barbeque! You hate barbeques, but the next thing you hear coming out of your mouth is, "Oooh, that's just what I always wanted!" You knowingly lie so as not to hurt their feelings. So it goes on, the Boss asks what you think of his new advertising strategy that is obviously a patchwork of hackneyed cliches, the man on the news lies to you every night because the government doesn't want you to know about the true state of the economy and so on... On the surface most people would say it is important in life to always deal in the truth and what is real. However, that to is a lie. To test this for yourself, just try being totally honest and truthful for one day. You will be amazed to discover how people really feel about the truth and what is real. Power of the mind-a practical guide |
Watching rocks move
Next time you are outdoors, find a large boulder, or even a rocky outcrop and watch it for 20 minutes to find out if you can see it moving.
Of course you wont see it move in that short space of time, but it is moving. If igneous rock it will have been at some time in a molten state beneath the earths crust and will eventually become so again, as the earths surface continues to move, shift and reform itself, like an enormous, planetary skin. Of course that rock has in fact been on an even vaster journey than that hasn't it? - because the very atoms of its substance originated in the core processes of stars before the earth was even formed (as were yours.) The stars themselves had to originate at some point in universal history as well didn't they? Everything that exists, from the material to the spiritual began from the one singular, unified source–whatever that was–hence everything is in motion, stars, planets, rocks, even you. All is moving from its cause to its result and nothing can exist separated from this great, powerful web of existence. Once it was believed that one's appearance in human form was not an end, but a beginning. A journey of discovery and growth back toward the 'source' of all things. Hence the ancient term,"Quo Vadis?" (whither goest thou?) A new era brings fresh waters of Life |
You really push my buttons!
Everyone likes to think that they are fully in control of their thoughts and feelings and that it is they who personally decide how they will react to whatever happens in their lives.
To put this common assumption to the test, try this simple little exercise. Pick a day, mark it on the calendar and decide on that day that you will not react emotionally to anything you see, hear, read or experience. Aim to be like Dr Spock or Data from Star Trek and only react to things in a purely detached, cool and matter of fact way, leaving all feelings and emotion out of it. What you will soon discover is that it is not only very difficult to do, but that it soon becomes apparent that you have certain triggers or 'buttons' that when 'pushed' by an external stimulus automatically set off a chain reaction of thoughts and emotion. Another horror story on the news, doom and gloom about the economy, political incorrectness, sex, a perceived threat, jealousy, anger, self pity...the fact is our lives are 95% controlled by our unconscious programming, which is also 1000 times more powerful in directing our behaviour than our consciousness is. The crucial question is "Who and what programmed your unconscious?" and is it what you want yourself to be programmed with? Because it is calling the shots, not you. Power of the mind-a practical guide |
Getting to know your unseen selfAs with most things of any importance to our spiritual lives, the knowledge and understanding of the Aura has been removed from common knowledge since the industrial revolution and the rise of mechanistic science. However people have known of the aura and its importance for
thousands of years. Many ancient carvings and rock paintings show people surrounded by ‘rays’ or what appear to be flames surrounding the head. Holy people have been portrayed with luminous or golden auras from well before Christian times. Homer described the aura as being “A luminous nebula derived from the divine essence”, and even the Pythagorean’s incorporated it into their teachings. Medieval saints and mystics recorded being able to see four different aspects of the aura and referred to these as: the Nimbus, the Halo, the Aureola and the Glory. The first two surround the head, the Aureola surrounds the entire body and the Glory is the combination of the other three. Energy storage unit, electromagnetic filter, auxiliary intelligence, memory pod, defence mechanism, transmitting/receiving station, and spiritual sanctuary–your aura is all of these and more! For an introduction and practical guide on how to detect and sense auras, see the article Introducing your Aura |