Showing posts with label asceticism. Show all posts
Showing posts with label asceticism. Show all posts

Friday, 19 December 2014

Post No. 626 - Reading



G'day, hello, howdy, hi, zdravstvujtye (some of my work colleagues are Russian, including an absolutely invaluable administrator who has recently taken maternity leave - may she and young one and family be blest), guten tag (where I have connection owing to a recent past life), sveiki, czesc (I have friends, not just colleagues, at work who are Polish), bonjour (colleagues at a former workplace were French, and we practised and tried to extend my woeful and limited range of this language), selamat pagi (one of the best junior engineers I ever worked with was Malaysian, and she taught me a few words), annyeonghaseyo, pryvit, bitaem, como vai (a friend of mine a few years ago, although not Brazilian, had Portuguese ancestry), ¡Hola (a former work colleague and friend, a VERY talented artist - with a Mexican sensibility to her artwork, particularly around the Day of the Dead - used to teach me Mexican Spanish), Selamat pagi, ni hao (ah, my work trips to Asia, and the many wonderful, wonderful people I have met there - and some excellent work colleagues and friends here, as well), bongiorno (my current home city of Melbourne has lots of Greeks and Italians, who have made our culture far richer - and made us coffee snobs :) ), hoschakal, hejsan, ciao, jo napolt kivanu, chào bà, chào ông, yiassou (from the city which has, I understand, the largest collection of Greek people outside of Greece), ceau, salam wa aleikum, sawas dee ka, dia duit, hoi, hei, namaste, marhaba, dobry den.

Well, after a hectic few weeks, I'm going to start trying to catch up with a few things on this blog, beginning with the reading links I've accumulated.


and more generally:


[1] BPLF = Balanced Positive (spiritual) Light Forces. See here and here for more on this.

[2] Please see here and my post "The Death of Wikipedia" for the reasons I now recommend caution when using Wikipedia. I'm also exploring use of h2g2, although that doesn't appear to be as extensive (h2g2 is intended - rather engagingly - to be the Earth edition of "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy").

Love, light, hugs and blessings


Gnwmythr, Wéofodthegn 
(pronounced "new-MYTH-ear"; ... aka Bellatrix Lux … aka Morinehtar … Would-be drýicgan or maga ... )

My "blogiography" (list of all posts and guide as to how to best use this site) is here, and my glossary/index is here.

I started this blog to cover karmic regression-rescue (see here and here), and it grew ... See here for my group mind project, here and here for my "Pagans for Peace" project (and join me at 9 PM on Sunday, wherever you are, to meditate for peace), and here for my bindrune kit-bag. I also strongly recommend learning how to flame, ground and shield, do alternate nostril breathing, work with colour, and see also here and be flexible. 

I am a Walker upon the Path of Balanced Positivity, seeking Spiritual Maturity.
  • neither eloquence nor inarticulateness inherently indicates correctness, but, as words can kill, the right to freedom of speech comes with a DUTY to be as well-informed, objective and balanced as you can be.
  • Gnwmythr's Stropping Strap: Occam's Razor only works if  the simplest solution is actually recognised as being the simplest, rather than the one that best fits one's bigotries being labelled 'simplest'.
  • Our entire life experience, with all the many wondrous and varied people, places and events in it, is too small a sample for statistical reliability about Life.
  • May the world of commerce and business be recognised to be a servant, not a master, of the lives of people.
  • Being accustomed to interacting via certain rules makes those rules neither right nor universal.
  • Like fire to the physical, emotions to the soul make a good servant, and a bad master.
  • The means shape the end.
  • My favourite action movie of all time is "Gandhi", although I've recently come across "Invictus" and might put that one in to that category. However, I loathe the stereotypical action movie - and, for similar reasons, I loathe many dramas, which are often emotionally violent, more so in some cases than many war films.
  • All of the above - and this blog - could be wrong, or subject to context, perspective, or state of spiritual evolution ...

Human dignity is the inherently cumulative holistic combination of human rights, wellbeing and potential, and all actions or interaction which promote, realise or facilitate same. The converse also applies: whatever degrades, diminishes or robs humans of dignity, is inherently undignified.
Gnwmythr

The “purpose” of spiritual evolution is not the attainment of “spiritual perfection” - not in the sense of not having to evolve further, at any rate, since there is no such thing. We need to evolve in order to grow - but we can take rest breaks (hopefully well earned :) ) along the way. No, the “purpose” of evolution is, rather, to perfect our ability to learn, and thus grow.
Gnwmythr
Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.
Martin Luther King, Jr.

Females, get over 'cute'. Get competent. Get trained. Get capable. Get over 'cute'. And those of you who are called Patty and Debby and Suzy, get over that. Because we use those names to infantalise females – we keep females in their 'little girl' state by the names we use for them. Get over it. If you want to be taken seriously, get serious.
Jane Elliott

The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good [people] to do nothing.
(based on writing by) Edmund Burke

We didn't inherit the Earth from our ancestors, we only borrowed it from our children
Antoine De Saint-Exupéry

There are risks and costs to a program of action. But they are far less than the long-range risks and costs of comfortable inaction.
John F. Kennedy

Tags: abuse of power, asceticism, common sense, discrimination, Druid, health, meditation, perspective, racism, reading, rituals, sexism, society, well being,
First published: Fryrsdagr, 19th December, 2014
Last edited (excluding fixing typo's and other minor matters): Friday, 19th December, 2014
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Thursday, 3 March 2011

Post No. 239 - Random thoughts ...

Just a few more random thoughts - on asceticism, art, getting to know one's parallels/subconscious, forgiveness, the benefits of passing over, change vs. learning, and leavening civilisations ...

Asceticism
One of the things which used to be portrayed about Eastern spirituality when I was growing up was that it allegedly favoured asceticism - "denial of the body" through discipline, and forcing the body to endure rigours such as protracted fasting, and living with very little. Well, I now know better - there are those who choose to practise austerity and a rigorous asceticism (e.g. saddhus) - and possibly that is exactly what they need, but they are not the be-all and end-all of the matter: many Eastern people genuinely practise a spiritual life whilst living their equivalent of a "normal" lifestyle.

Where I think a relative form of asceticism has a place is in the lifestyles of us in the West, in the First World. Many of us seem to want "things", and our houses are now much bigger than those of our grandparents, and all of us consumes the limited resources that the Earth has. My opinion is that, as part of being a spiritual being, we should seek to live as materially simple a life as we can. That shows respect and caring (dare I say "love") for the world we live on.

In the four years I was at University, I moved 33 times. As a result, for some decades I had a rule that I would only own enough to fit into a single trailer so I could move easily and readily. That is a rule which is harder to follow here in Victoria, as in Queensland many places are rented furnished, which is not so in Victoria (so I also have to fit fridge and bed, for example, on the trailer). It is also harder with a family, cats, reference books, and my crystals and other magical tools ... but I still try to follow the principle of not consuming unnecessarily out of love for this planet as a spiritual act.

Also, there is an element of choice here: if asceticism is forced because one is living in poverty, then it will not be of any spiritual value. See Maslow's Heirarchy of Needs, which I have mentioned in previous posts (here, and in here).

Art
This speculation was spurred by watching The L-Word. What is the purpose of art? I've heard in recent years the view that the purpose of art is to provoke a response. I disagree - especially musical art.

I used to think that art is about appreciating beauty more - not in the sense of portraying those who the media claim are beautiful people, but things like being able to portray the beauty in everyday people, or the beauty of spirit inside one who has been disfigured (perhaps by an explosion, for instance).

Now, I tend to phrase it a little more broadly, and say that art is about increasing our appreciation of life. To me, much of that is about being shown a beauty I had not seen before, but it may, from time to time, also include something which is challenging or provocative.

I also consider that the opinion of what is art to be subjective, not objective. That means something may be considered by most of the billions of other people on this planet but not by me, and we are both right :)

Getting to know one's parallels/unconscious
It might be useful to describe how to go about this from the point of view of being a totally raw novice, with little experience or development of skill. If I found myself back in that situation, I would probably do something along the lines of the following:
  1. Ask, every night before going to sleep for at least a month, to practise in sleep state for the exercises I was about to try (this request goes to your Guides/Higher Self (Overself)/Patron Deities).
  2. For the last week of that month, add to the request by also lighting a candle where it will not cause a fire (make sure there are no candles, that it is on/in fireproof containers, is a small candle, etc).
  3. In the first fortnight after the month of preparation, begin by focusing my attention on all the sensations, emotions and thoughts I was encountering, with a view to developing my awareness and sensitivity (see this post). I would increase this from an initial 5 minutes to an hour, gradually.
  4. During the second fortnight, I would set up a protective circle before doing this, and open the circle at the end. In the second week, I would also add doing a ritual to invoke the energies of the Qabbalistic Sphere of Yesod.
  5. During the third fortnight, I would add to the ritual, invocation of Yesod and a shortened check of awareness (say 10 to 20 minutes) by then playing various guided meditation tapes (that I had pre-listened to in a normal state of consciousness so I knew what they contained, to make sure there were no suggestion that were disharmonious to me or my principles), again aiming to get this up to around an hour long session. In the second week of this fortnight, I would also experiment with various incenses to see which ones seemed to me to be giving a heightened state of awareness or increased sensitivity. (All the while during these fortnights I would be continuing the request and candle when going to bed.)
  6. Finally, I would aim to either meditate, or pre-tape a guided meditation, with a view to changing my awareness and becoming aware of influences and interactions from my subconscious/my parallels.
Of course, for that to be meaningful I also need to post more about the invocation rituals and guided meditation - which doesn't fit into this post. The Qabbalistic ritual is an adaptation of the fuller version of the "Lesser Banishing Ritual of the Pentagram" which I posted here (for simplicity, I left out the visualisation of the Archangels).

Finding out more about your parallels can be useful, as many past lives that we look at may actually be of our parallels, who are, effectively, another part of us and, via our shared unconscious, influence us as we influence them.

Lobsang Rampa has some good comments on the unconscious in "Candlelight".

Forgiveness
Further to my recent post on this, the film "Red Dust", which covers the Truth and Reconcialiation Commission in South Africa, is worth looking at.

Dying can lead to resolution of mysteries ...
One of the things about dying is that one views one's life. In the course of this, and by dint of the greater psychic awareness one has inherently as a result of being in the astral, it may be quite possible for one to find out what is behind mysteries that one was plagued by in the physical. Say, for instance, someone lost their child to a violent crime and the criminal was never found, nor the body found (as has happened in one case here in the 80s): when the grieving parents die, they will be reunited with the child, and they will have a chance to resolve the mystery (unless they have some truly extraordinarily bad karmic debt).

So .. if you find yourself thinking "it's a shame so-and-so didn't find out about X before she/he/ze died", don't - they will find out :)

Is change a better word than learning?
In the field of spirituality, one often is told that one's purpose here is to learn: could a better word be "change" - as in, "change for the better"?

If I think about something such as ... say, helping to organise an LGBTIQ spirituality conference (as I have done in the past, and hope to do so again for MidSumma 2013), I can say that I guess I have learned things like trusting myself more, I have acquired more experience, etc - but if I was to try writing a list of what I had learned, I would struggle. If, on the other hand, I was to try writing a list of how I had changed, I would fly through it - I am stronger, I am more experienced at X, Y and Z, I know more about A, B and C, etc, etc, etc.

So ... is "change for the better" more appropriate than "learning"?

I think it is for me - how about you, dear Reader? :)

One other thought comes to mind here: the issue of balance. Often this is thought of in terms of karmic balance, but there is also the issue of seeing "both sides of the coin", so to speak. You MUST have lives as male and female, for example, to enable you to evolve; you must also have lives of poverty and riches, before you can evolve.

There are other personal sequences where people often try to seek a balance by, more or less, going from one form of extremism to another. Hence, for instance, I have read (and don't actually agree with) a suggestion that Hitler would come back as a vehement preacher in the next life ...

In my case, I have tended to try to balance a life in the military by a life in a religious order. I have tried to balance out a hedonistic lifestyles in one century and piratical life the century before with a disciplined British navy life in the 1800s (I was no-one known or famous, by the way). I tried to balance some lives where I was a compliant, obediant female in the 1700s with a more wilful life in the early 1900s - a bit like teenagers as they are stereotypically thought of today, perhaps :) Unfortunately, going against my father's wishes led to a path that I regret and am still paying for to this day [1] ... so, there is a time, a place and a way to seek to ba;ance things out: better yet, do not fall into the trap of being extremist in the first place :)

Leavening civilisations
Something I am thinking about at the moment is Rampa's comments (in "The Hermit" and "Tibetan Sage") that the "Gardeners of the Earth" (i.e. benevolent aliens seeking to help the evolution of spiritual life on Earth - see the notes in this post) occasionally try to "leaven" the quality of sentient life on the Earth by introducing new civilisations. I have not reached any conclusions about this yet, just mentioning that it is something I am cogitating upon - especially when I see people like an ex's son have six kids, who he is raising in an alcoholic, criminal (well, formerly criminal - I don't know if he still is), violent (again - formerly) environment. The last time I had contact with him, he had a new girlfriend who appeared to be sorting him out ...

but then I compare this with the people who are wonderful parents, and note that they inevitably have fewer kids. Will the world evolve to be a better place under these circumstances? Maybe that depends on whether or not the education system will pick up the slack ...

As I said, I don't know one way or the other ... it is just one of the things currently occupying my mind and my meditations - along with things such as should I try to improve my ability to channel names, which I tend to block because of the expectations that get put on mediums to channel such details instead of the person being helped getting metaphorically off their backside and sharing the responsibility for a good reading by doing their part (such as preparing ... ).

Greed = glamour
One of the main ills of the world, in my opinion, is greed - wanting more than one needs. This is something I also refer to as materialism or being materialistic (probably the more precise reference!), or consumerism. One aspect of this is being sucked in by advertising (including the portrayal of lifestyles on TV), which Alice Bailey refers to as "glamour", being caught like a moth to the glitzy lights of what appears glamorous. (Bailey even wrote a book about the problem ... )

Control through phone messages
Something which struck me as my partner and I continued watching the L Word (which I posted some initial impressions of - not changed as yet! - here) was the control exerted over people by leaving short, useless messages.

A couple of times towards the end of Season One Tina left messages for Bette where she was clearly upset asking here to call, but not saying what could have happened. That left Bette the potential to think Tina could have miscarried, which could have caused Bette to panic or have unnecessary stress. A better approach would have been to say something along the lines of "I have been threatened by a sperm donor's current girlfriend" - which is something Tina didn't do even when Bette did ring. It is important to get emotions out and expressed, yes, but it is also important to have consideration for partners. Did Tina fear Bette would not interrupt her work to call her? Given the unbalanced attitudes Bette had, that could have been the case - but better to know that and deal with it, than to try to exert a form of control over one's partner.

This sort of consideration applies more broadly: I detest getting short, useless messages "call me" from work colleagues, when if they said something useful such as "call me about a potential bid X", I can assess that against my other work priorities, and call it in the order that is best for the company - which is not necessarily best for the ego of the person leaving the message. They think that, by being vague, I will call to find out what it is all about, whereas I generally choose to ignore such messages or put them down at the bottom of the pile. It doesn't take much effort to have some basic manners and consideration.

Love, light, hugs and blessings

Gnwmythr

Notes:
  1. An ex-partner and my current partner were on the opposite side to me in the Second World War, by the way: there are some interesting dynamics in these situations, as well some - in these cases - karmic balancing, as well as love and continuation of relationships from past lives.

This post's photo is yet to be posted.

Tags: lifestyles, asceticism, art, Qabbalah, Yesod, unconscious, forgiveness, death, growth, evolution, greed, glamour, materialism, consumerism, Alice A Bailey, Maslow,

First published: Thorsdagr, 3rd March, 2011

Last edited: Sunday, 6th March, 2011
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