I've just finished watching the film "Flatliners". It started off as a spooky sort of thing, and I was thinking it could lead to some good "ghost-busting" sort of action, but it wasn't that sort of film.
Nevertheless, it was quite a useful film, as it presented a viewpoint about the need to avoid having unresolved issues in our past. Other films touch on this. I recently read a book, which I loaned to a friend, about a rescue medium's life: in that, she talked about the importance of not having unresolved problems, and gave several films which illustrated that. Unfortunately, I don't have the book back yet, so won't be able to give details for a little while ... Some films I can recall, however, are "Always", "Heart and Souls", "Ghost", and "Voices" (for which I could not find a link).
The book was quite interesting because of the examples of reasons that people could become earthbound by. One was a woman who had been raped and murdered, and then her attacker committed suicide: she avoided passing over for fear of running in to him - which is unlikely, as the astral equivalent of what we perceive as "physical distance" is compatability - distance or closeness of vibration, frequency or essence.
I've been meaning to post for some time about the importance of dealing with unresolved issues. Obviously such can be psychologically damaging to oneself, but more importantly,. the energy tends to wander off, or free float, when it is not claimed by the person responsible for it. That energy can then influence other people.
Of course, such influence could be good (e.g., if one was having a pleasant interlude, the energies would be "nice", and that could possibly help someone who was feeling down), but most times that people are not inclined to take responsibility for themselves and their energy is when they're down, angry or upset. That energy is likely to influence others to be down, angry or upset, some of which tends to get stuck in the free floating cloud of energy, and - hey presto! When we go to claim responsibility for that energy, there just seems to be so much more of it that someone came up with the term "three fold return" ....
In fact, it should also be kept in mind, at this point, as illustrated quite nicely by some of the films I mentioned earlier in this post, that the living are influenced by the dead.
On that, sure, most of the time the influence is by means of influencing our thoughts and emotions (whether for better or worse), but sometimes there is a physical influence. For instance, Debbie Malone's book "Never Alone" talks about having physical bruises after the sensation of being strangled, and Dion Fortune talked of finding physical scratches after psychic attack. You know what? You can defend yourself against psychic attack whether it has a physical manifestation or not. I've posted about this in the past enough, so I won't repeat myself here (it's late). *
If it helps you, keep in mind that you may well have dished this out to someone else. If that doesn't help you, don't think about it. I'm not trying to be funny here: it is a case of find what works, and use it. Some people are quite comfortable with the idea of karma (I'm one of them), and it can give us an inspiration to endure, to outlast, whatever we are going through because, IF IT IS KARMIC, and we have the right attitude, IT WILL END.
As another suggestion, try thinking about how things were so HUGE when you were small, and how now they don't seem that way at all. As a seven year old, it was the end of the world to not do homework and be told off by my teacher; now, in my day job, I have to explain multi-million dollar projects being late because of inadequate staffing/resources, or explain why other people have over or under estimated projects.
Actually, on that, I think we all have things in our past that we are ashamed off. As a kid, one may have told a lie or two; when one was a young adult, one may have been too cocky and disrespectful, as an older adult one may have allowed the world to sway one from one's path in life. These things are real: you can beat yourself over the head about it, or you can accept it, move on, and make the best with what you have. Maybe what is in your past is worse: maybe you have a serious crime, or several. You cannot change it, but you must come to terms with that aspect of yourself, and with what you have done, and make amends as best you can where that is necessary.
Otherwise it will come back when you are trying to pass from this world to the summerlands** (or the other side, if that is your preferred terminology).
This is not just something mentioned in films; recently someone close to me reminded me of after they had an NDE during surgery.
Now, at the risk of making this ramble even more disjointed, I want to touch on two more personal responsibility topics that I have been planning on posting about:
(1) how you behave under stress is a fair indication of your innermost self
- I particularly watch how I behave in traffic jams and when things go off the rails at work. I'm often not proud of what I see, but acknowledging that that part of me is there is the start to dealing with it.
(2) there is ALWAYS a price to pay
- this may not be monetary, but there is always some sort of price to pay: for instance, if you want to learn something, and are not being charged a monetary fee, you will still have to pay the "price" of effort and time, and maybe a karmic price for not applying your knowledge afterwards ... there is ALWAYS a price.
In fact, what you are prepared to give up, or not to give up, is both a price, and an indication of how serious you are about a thing.
May your prices be what you can afford and wish to bear, and may you find accepting your dark self within your bounds of capability.
Love, light, hugs and blessings
Gnwmythr
* See, for instance, http://gnwmythr.blogspot.com/2008/07/psychic-attack-being-caught-out.html, and http://gnwmythr.blogspot.com/2007/11/protection.html
** I thought it was interesting that the film "Flatliners" did show that not everyone experiences the same, not everyone has the tunnel and bright light and happiness, when they pass over. The talk of being in fields reminded me of the Greek concept expressed in the Roman word of Elysium.
Tags: personal characteristics, attitudes, change, charging, daily life, emotions, energy work, forgiveness, interpersonal interactions, karma, life lessons, priorities, self knowledge, stress
First published: Wednesday 29th July, 2009
Last edited: Wednesday 29th July, 2009
Wednesday, 29 July 2009
Saturday, 20 June 2009
Post No. 062 - Perspective
My starting point for this post is a comment I received from someone I knew a couple of decades ago. She in all seriousness tried to tell me that I should work on a personal dislike of some foods as a higher priority than working on world events (such as mass starvation, or even poverty at home). Naturally, I disagreed with her then, I still disagree with that small minded point of view, and I have spent considerable time and energy working (though both psychic means and more conventional lobbying of politicians) at making this world a better place.
Who knows - maybe that person was just upset that I didn't enjoy her favourite foods/meals when I was there for a shared meal as much as she did? I certainly enjoyed most of the meals, and was not rude or impolite on the basis of my food dislikes.
It all smacked a bit of the parent trying to get a child to eat by saying "think of all the starving people in X". My response usually was "send them the food then", but
(a) I DO live in a privileged society, and am privileged to be in a comfortable position where I have never been short of food;
(b) trying to over-feed or force-feed people is actually not hospitable (it can be harmful to health), although understandable (and, in the case of alcohol, choosing to become upset because someone will nto drink alcohol is pathetic, morally wrong behaviour); and
(c) as I recently had pointed out to me when I was struggling to finish what was on my plate (despite what I've just written, I don't like to see food go to waste :D ), food can be wasted on a plate or wasted in your system if it cannot be usefully digested, and just get stored as fat instread.
But before I get further into my thoughts on this topic, take a moment to ponder: what is your scale of perspective? What is important to you?
A common item of importance to many people is family. I have talked about this with both my sisters (well, actually I have more than two, but I have not met my half-sister in my birth family yet) in the context of caring for my father (that is, my adoptive father) and my brother (my full-blood brother in my family). The conversations were along the lines of "of course I/you/we would do, he/she/they are family!". That's good - that's great, actually.
But it is not what I consider the be-all and end-all of love and caring.
In the Hindu tradition, the Path of Bhakti Yoga is the path of devotion and love. To summarise this (and this is mostly based on what I read in Lobsang Rampa * - for a different point of view, look at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bhakti for the "proper" view), people start off only being able to love in a very limited way: this is usually described as "self love", and may be described - incorrectly, I consider - as beign selfish. An analogy for this is a child, who is self centred.
As one grows, whether that is maturing within one lifetime or over a longer term perspective, one's idea of who one should love expands. This is the point where many people are at, in my experience: they consider love for family (including, for the purposes of this post, "romantic" love) is the highest pinnacle of evolution, anf the standard by which all loves should be measured.
Sorry - it ain't.
I've posted previously on this view ("who is in your family"), but to pick up from a more recent post (on chakras and push-pull), I would describe these people as "living in the solar plexus/heart chakras" - most of the energy being used in their lives is energy on the level of emotions and love (with, perhaps, occasional excursions into throat chakra energies, which are communication based, and may be manifested [used] in more functional family units).
That is not the limit of love, nor of evolution.
The idea of Bhakti is that one expands one's devotion as one evolves. In a sense, you could say you practice loving until you can apply it more widely. You start off loving a parent, then youir family, then your friends, then maybe others (strangers? I'll touch on St Francis of Assisi shortly) or a guru (which simply means "teacher" - don't give the word any more emotional meaning, I would suggest, than you would to the word "teacher"). Ultimately you attain "Ai", which Rampa defines (in Wisdom of the Ancients") as universal love, in the agape sense of love that Christ wanted humanity to live and manifest (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agape).
There are steps along the way here. Do you feel comfortable giving donations to people who are less well off than you? Would you do as St Francis of Assissi did, and give someone half your garment?
In my case, I'm somewhere between the two: I'm very happy to give donations and spend time and energy working for the wellbeing of people outside my family (I consider my friends my family of choice, so I include them in that - and I have housed friends in need), but I'm certainly not as evolved as St Francis of Assissi!
It can be interesting to contemplate why people limit their love - whether that is to only their nation, or only their social group/culture, or only their family. Is it because they fear that they don't have enough love to go round, or that their love for theose close to them will somehow be cheapened by having agape type love for other people outside that group?
The Universe is actually very abundant - particularly on the topic of love. In fact, a definition I like of "God" from Stuart Holroyd's "Briefing for the Landing on Planet Earth" (Pub. Corgi, 1979; ISBN 10: 0552109975, ISBN 13: 9780552109970; I think republished as "The Nine: Briefing from Deep Space" - see http://www.theonlyplanetofchoice.com/newbook.htm) is along the lines of (my books are still in storage, so I can't be too precise about this - sorry - and you should see what I had to go through to get a citation for the book! :D ):
So, if Deity grows on love, it would seem to me that there is a good reason to have more love in the Universe, and if there is more love floating round in the Universe, then that is surely going to be of benefit to those we love at some point? Somewhere they should bump into all that extra love, surely?
There's an additional element to this, and that is the love that is manifested by people who live more in the higher chakras - third eye, crown, Soul Star, etc.
This love may be hard to understand for those who live in the heart chakra. For instance, someone who lives in the Third Eye Chakra may be driven to provide lots of selfless psychic service to people (a bit like John Edwards *, or Gordon Smith *, or Allison DuBois * [who the TV series "Medium" is supposed to be based on], or James Van Praagh, who the TV series "Ghost Whisperer" is supposed to be based on).
If someone is living in other chakras, they may become someone like a Mohandas K. Gandhi, the Mahatma, or seek to live well beyond the confines of loving only their immediate (or wider) family. As another example of that, one woman I knew, who was a bit like a foster mother to me, used to send her children out through the streets of Frankston to find homeless kids and bring them home (one of them wound up marrying a close friend of mine).
Where do you fit on this scale of Bhakti?
More importantly, are you prepared to let others live wherever they are on that scale?
(As a post script, perhaps most people living in their heart chakras is the reason some poets use the language of love to try and shift people along the scale of Bhakti? I was tryiong to find an example for you, dear Reader, but can only think of the Persian**, Sufi poet Rumi, and I don't think that is quite what I am looking for.)
* Wikipedia is an online encyclopaedia. Being online does not rule out conventional thinking, nor intellectual conservatism. Hence, there is a fair chunk of the "claims to be psychic" stuff in articles I link to. I don't consider that bad - you should be thinking critically anyway. However, if you're unhappy with what you read on Wikipedia, look at the source links (generally included at the end of the article, and you may be able to find more "favourable" links.
** This a National Geographic link, not Wikipedia, and is well worth a look - even if you know a great deal about Persia, and ESPECIALLY should be looked at if your knowledge is based on "Iran"
Love, light, hugs and blessings
Gnwmythr
This post's photo is yet to be posted
Tags: personal characteristics, attitudes, discrimination, emotions, family, interpersonal interactions, judging others, life lessons, Lobsang Rampa, self knowledge,
First published: Saturday 20th June, 2009
Last edited: Saturday 20th June, 2009
Who knows - maybe that person was just upset that I didn't enjoy her favourite foods/meals when I was there for a shared meal as much as she did? I certainly enjoyed most of the meals, and was not rude or impolite on the basis of my food dislikes.
It all smacked a bit of the parent trying to get a child to eat by saying "think of all the starving people in X". My response usually was "send them the food then", but
(a) I DO live in a privileged society, and am privileged to be in a comfortable position where I have never been short of food;
(b) trying to over-feed or force-feed people is actually not hospitable (it can be harmful to health), although understandable (and, in the case of alcohol, choosing to become upset because someone will nto drink alcohol is pathetic, morally wrong behaviour); and
(c) as I recently had pointed out to me when I was struggling to finish what was on my plate (despite what I've just written, I don't like to see food go to waste :D ), food can be wasted on a plate or wasted in your system if it cannot be usefully digested, and just get stored as fat instread.
But before I get further into my thoughts on this topic, take a moment to ponder: what is your scale of perspective? What is important to you?
A common item of importance to many people is family. I have talked about this with both my sisters (well, actually I have more than two, but I have not met my half-sister in my birth family yet) in the context of caring for my father (that is, my adoptive father) and my brother (my full-blood brother in my family). The conversations were along the lines of "of course I/you/we would do
But it is not what I consider the be-all and end-all of love and caring.
In the Hindu tradition, the Path of Bhakti Yoga is the path of devotion and love. To summarise this (and this is mostly based on what I read in Lobsang Rampa * - for a different point of view, look at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bhakti for the "proper" view), people start off only being able to love in a very limited way: this is usually described as "self love", and may be described - incorrectly, I consider - as beign selfish. An analogy for this is a child, who is self centred.
As one grows, whether that is maturing within one lifetime or over a longer term perspective, one's idea of who one should love expands. This is the point where many people are at, in my experience: they consider love for family (including, for the purposes of this post, "romantic" love) is the highest pinnacle of evolution, anf the standard by which all loves should be measured.
Sorry - it ain't.
I've posted previously on this view ("who is in your family"), but to pick up from a more recent post (on chakras and push-pull), I would describe these people as "living in the solar plexus/heart chakras" - most of the energy being used in their lives is energy on the level of emotions and love (with, perhaps, occasional excursions into throat chakra energies, which are communication based, and may be manifested [used] in more functional family units).
That is not the limit of love, nor of evolution.
The idea of Bhakti is that one expands one's devotion as one evolves. In a sense, you could say you practice loving until you can apply it more widely. You start off loving a parent, then youir family, then your friends, then maybe others (strangers? I'll touch on St Francis of Assisi shortly) or a guru (which simply means "teacher" - don't give the word any more emotional meaning, I would suggest, than you would to the word "teacher"). Ultimately you attain "Ai", which Rampa defines (in Wisdom of the Ancients") as universal love, in the agape sense of love that Christ wanted humanity to live and manifest (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agape).
There are steps along the way here. Do you feel comfortable giving donations to people who are less well off than you? Would you do as St Francis of Assissi did, and give someone half your garment?
In my case, I'm somewhere between the two: I'm very happy to give donations and spend time and energy working for the wellbeing of people outside my family (I consider my friends my family of choice, so I include them in that - and I have housed friends in need), but I'm certainly not as evolved as St Francis of Assissi!
It can be interesting to contemplate why people limit their love - whether that is to only their nation, or only their social group/culture, or only their family. Is it because they fear that they don't have enough love to go round, or that their love for theose close to them will somehow be cheapened by having agape type love for other people outside that group?
The Universe is actually very abundant - particularly on the topic of love. In fact, a definition I like of "God" from Stuart Holroyd's "Briefing for the Landing on Planet Earth" (Pub. Corgi, 1979; ISBN 10: 0552109975, ISBN 13: 9780552109970; I think republished as "The Nine: Briefing from Deep Space" - see http://www.theonlyplanetofchoice.com/newbook.htm) is along the lines of (my books are still in storage, so I can't be too precise about this - sorry - and you should see what I had to go through to get a citation for the book! :D ):
- "a universal intelligence which grows on love".
So, if Deity grows on love, it would seem to me that there is a good reason to have more love in the Universe, and if there is more love floating round in the Universe, then that is surely going to be of benefit to those we love at some point? Somewhere they should bump into all that extra love, surely?
There's an additional element to this, and that is the love that is manifested by people who live more in the higher chakras - third eye, crown, Soul Star, etc.
This love may be hard to understand for those who live in the heart chakra. For instance, someone who lives in the Third Eye Chakra may be driven to provide lots of selfless psychic service to people (a bit like John Edwards *, or Gordon Smith *, or Allison DuBois * [who the TV series "Medium" is supposed to be based on], or James Van Praagh, who the TV series "Ghost Whisperer" is supposed to be based on).
If someone is living in other chakras, they may become someone like a Mohandas K. Gandhi, the Mahatma, or seek to live well beyond the confines of loving only their immediate (or wider) family. As another example of that, one woman I knew, who was a bit like a foster mother to me, used to send her children out through the streets of Frankston to find homeless kids and bring them home (one of them wound up marrying a close friend of mine).
Where do you fit on this scale of Bhakti?
More importantly, are you prepared to let others live wherever they are on that scale?
(As a post script, perhaps most people living in their heart chakras is the reason some poets use the language of love to try and shift people along the scale of Bhakti? I was tryiong to find an example for you, dear Reader, but can only think of the Persian**, Sufi poet Rumi, and I don't think that is quite what I am looking for.)
* Wikipedia is an online encyclopaedia. Being online does not rule out conventional thinking, nor intellectual conservatism. Hence, there is a fair chunk of the "claims to be psychic" stuff in articles I link to. I don't consider that bad - you should be thinking critically anyway. However, if you're unhappy with what you read on Wikipedia, look at the source links (generally included at the end of the article, and you may be able to find more "favourable" links.
** This a National Geographic link, not Wikipedia, and is well worth a look - even if you know a great deal about Persia, and ESPECIALLY should be looked at if your knowledge is based on "Iran"
Love, light, hugs and blessings
Gnwmythr
This post's photo is yet to be posted
Tags: personal characteristics, attitudes, discrimination, emotions, family, interpersonal interactions, judging others, life lessons, Lobsang Rampa, self knowledge,
First published: Saturday 20th June, 2009
Last edited: Saturday 20th June, 2009
Post No. 061 - Maturity
I thought I'd throw together some thoughts on the topic of maturity (for Wikipedia's thoughts, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maturity_%28psychological%29 and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sexual_maturity. These have no particular basis other than my life experience (I deliberately have not read the Wikipedia links), and I haven't bothered to try to track down the sources of some of my information. Feel free to disregard or disagree as you deem most appropriate :)
Let's begin by considering physical maturity.
Biologically, this is often indicated by the ability to reproduce. Animals are often considered physically mature at this point in their development, and I suspect that, in simpler times, many millennia in the past, humans were also considered mature at around that point.
I mentioned "in simpler times".
In today's world, survival is more complicated than it was in hunter-gatherer societies. In those societies, "work" to survive was, I have read, around 25-30hours per week. Now, in the materialistic, consumeristic western world, working weeks are often at least 35 hours, maybe up to 70 hours for some professionals/small business owners/driven people (I occasionally joke with my partner about "retiring to a 5 day, 40 hour week :) ), and education to significant standards of literacy and numeracy is almost essential.
Today, maturity - let’s call it "social maturity" - is generally defined as being at around 18 years of age. At that point, many societies allow young people to vote, be independent of parents, etc. A better way to define this would be the ability to function as an independent being in whatever society one is in. In Neanderthal society, that maybe meant having your own campfire and contributing to hunting and gathering. In today's western (developed) society, this is - in my opinion: keep your own thinking caps on and activated! - characterised by moving out of one's parents home. Unless you have a valid excuse such as a disability, if you haven't moved out and lived as an independent adult, you have not yet attained social maturity. To move out and live independently requires skills such as the ability to plan and prepare nutritious meals, budgeting, getting and keeping an adequate (legal) income and knowledge of legal requirements such as voting, not assaulting people or being a thief, etc. (Mind you, I do support things such as lowering voting age to 16 - or, at the very least, allowing those who are prepared to join the armed forces and potentially put their lives on the line for their country to be able to vote, if they are under the current voting age: to be able to be killed in a conflict in which you have no say is, to me, slightly more immoral than being able to be killed without a say ...)
The discrepancy between physical and social maturity has, in my opinion, been a problem at times: teenagers have bodies that for thousands of years were considered mature, but live in a society where they are not allowed to act as independent beings. (This is a bit like the problem of our dietary cravings being based on famine-feast conditions, rather than today's world of - for MOST of those in DEVELOPED nations - plenty [the qualification is because of poverty and homelessness].) Some of that is being addressed - for instance, some societies have ages of consent which are around 16 years old.
However, some of that discrepancy between physical and social maturity is, I consider, beneficial: being pregnant as a teenager in a society of Neanderthals, where life would be over when you lost your teeth at around 40years of age, where you were able to hunt or gather to help your band survive as a teenager, and where the band would probably help you without question, is probably less devastating than today's society where teenage parents are judged harshly, rarely adequately supported and may suffer from reduced opportunities for education.
In either case, starting to have sex does NOT show maturity, whether it is at below the legal age of consent (which, in many cases, is arguably too high or, in some cases, too low - and the discrepancy between same sex and opposite sex ages of consent is abhorrent, wrong and unjustifiable) or above, possibly well above. I've known, as I was growing and still at school, other kids who started having sex very early. They, despite a bravado that they were more mature and somehow inherently better people than other kids who chose not to have sex (and none of that was for religious reasons: the current neo-Christian fundamentalism hadn't made itself felt in that quiet little part of Queensland at that time - and maybe hasn't yet!) because of having had sex and "relationships" (VERY big quotation marks), were actually more probably just reacting thoughtlessly to genetic drivers (particularly the "selfish gene") and showing their immaturity by failing to understand what being an adult meant. For starters, they were NOT better human beings. (Also, I wonder if they went through the too common teenage whinges about housework and parties at home, and didn't think about contributing to the household economics ... if they did, they only confirm their immaturity.)
There is an issue which is very relevant here: emotional maturity.
Emotional maturity is largely independent of physical and mental maturity. I know people in their 30s, 40s and older who I consider far less emotionally mature than some teenagers. (That does NOT mean that all teenagers are emotionally mature! It certainly does not mean that any teenager is necessarily more mature than the adults around them.) Some of those older people are in the engineering profession that I currently labour in. I wish we made as widespread use of "Emotional Intelligence" (or "Emotional Quotient") tests as we did of IQ (Intelligence Quotient) tests. IQ is, to me, of far less importance than EQ.
Emotional maturity is, in my opinion, most characterised by the ability to defer gratification. The immature want pleasure, and want it NOW! In children, this immaturity may show as tantrums; in older people (including teenagers), it tends to show as materialism/consumerism - HAVING to have the latest gimmick or gizmo, or compulsive shopping (I am NOT referring to shopping occasionally for pleasure here), or being surprised when others don't share your consumerism/materialism. It is also a large part of the reason the plant is being screwed over environmentally, as consumerism/materialism (look the terms up on Wikipedia if you wish) in the developed world uses a massive amount of resources.
Another vaguely related issue here is population growth, which is, in my opinion, an environmental crime. Population growth happens for a wide range of reasons, but one of the key ones is the urge to have children - to leave something of oneself behind in the world, for posterity. Having "replacement numbers" of children is fine (although there are social issues such as discrimination against same sex couples, poverty and child abuse which need to be corrected. One of the ulitmate signs of maturity is to control this powerful biological urge and have no more than "replacement numbers" of children. (Read "The Selfish Gene", by Richard Dawkins, for some thoughts on this issue.)
One other aspect of emotional maturity I wish to mention here is the ability to form and sustain mutually fulfilling relationships. This requires communication, deferred gratification, self knowledge and a whole host of other skills. It is another very good measure of emotional maturity. Good manners is, in my opinion, an offshoot of this.
I have come across people who thing being confronting or rude (they call it "challenging") is good, or a sign of being evolved. Some times - very few times - it is. Most times it is not - all the times I have experienced it, it was simply boorish, intellectually arrogant behaviour (what would be called "being a troll" in internet groups). My karma must have improved quite a bit on this aspect: I haven't been subjected to that for quite some years now. (The fact that I experienced it at all suggests to me that I probably exhibited the same behaviour myself. Or perhaps it was a learning experience ... nah - that latter attitude is too much of a cop out, in my view.)
By "good manners" I do not mean following some of the old fashioned books on etiquette or following particular ideas on social intercourse (such as that you have to converse and discuss intimate details of your or others life - gossip is one of the most damaging forms of social cohesion/bonding that I know of): I mean basic courteously. Things like acknowledging other people's presence, paying attention and having some consideration of, for instance, someone who is using a walking stick and thus appears to have mobility issues, not jumping to conclusions.
Also, emotionally mature people can accept valid criticism/correction without falling to pieces. Attainment of this aspect requires working through Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs until one has good self esteem. Criticism that is malicious may have a useful element of truth in it, but criticism that is wrong is something that should be rejected.
As a final issue, I personally consider emotionally maturity is marked by the presence of empathy (which I touched on when discussing manners).
Now, mental maturity. I'm going to propose that this comprises two parts:
(1) having a basic education so one has an adequate ability to comprehend basic things (like language, numbers, science) without necessarily being an expert in anything in particular (getting to leaving level of high school will pretty much cover this); and
(2) the ability to think independently (i.e., the ability to not be duped by advertising, political "spin", or the "spin" of others such as media or false gurus [I certainly hope you've kept your thinking caps on as you read this!]).
Getting a good basic education is so fundamental to being able to think independently and critically, as well as to stimulating the developing areas of the brain, that I consider it an essential part of achieving maturity. In matters such as attaining human rights for women in developing nations, education of girls is often a fundamental prerequisite.
Good education often covers critical thinking.
Now spiritual maturity. This, incidentally, is not the final version of maturity that I will consider :) It is, however, a development of the previous versions of maturity, and is reliant upon achieving physical, social, emotional and mental maturity.
Spiritual maturity is, to me, defined by:
(i) acceptance of the fact that change is inevitable, and one can best manage that by choosing to grow constructively (towards being all that one can be);
(ii) being able to look beyond the world one has grown up in, and see behind the barriers of social norms, socialisation and expectations placed upon us to what is of lasting, valid importance to the spirit/psyche/soul of oneself and others (I could refer to this as "not being duped by society");
(iii) being able to see the caring behind emotionally confronting behaviour (in a sense, this means not being duped by people who put on a facade of being nice); and
(iv) being able to identify own mistakes and address them without having to be kicked up the backside.
One definition I considered and ultimately rejected for this version of maturity is:
"giving serious, BALANCED consideration to the impact one has on others and the world, but without sacrificing oneself for others (one could say this requires, in essence, a balance between Left Hand Path and Right Hand Path, or the ability to look one's darker aspects in the face and accept, integrate and love those parts of oneself without being consumed by them)"
I think the points I have come up with cover this adequately.
The last point I listed under spiritual maturity leads me to a new topic: what I call "functional maturity". Unlike spiritual maturity, this is not dependent on other maturities, although mental and emotional maturity are probably going to happen first. My definition of this is:
- being able to be given a task and not need excessive supervision or motivation to satisfactorily undertake it.
Young children (not teenagers) need a high level of guidance to complete tasks - it is how they learn. Adults should not need that same level of guidance: they should be able to do some thinking about this task is to be done, and get it under way (with appropriate checks back to the originator of the request).
Finally, I have an aspect I have, for the purposes of this blog, chosen to call "general/overall maturity". My measure of this is experiencing a Saturn Return (at around 28-30yrs), which is when one things one has not attended to adequately in the first part of one's life come back to bite one on the bum. So ... if you've attained a wide range of the types of maturity I've outlined here, but have neglected one, that one is what life will tend to throw up in your face. It's a bit of a "catch all" provision. Unfortunately, it doesn't work as a universal thing, as I know people in their 30s who are still self absorbed gits, and older people who are also failing on some aspect of maturity.
I'm personally working through some issues - maybe as a result of my Uranus return - it's probably a bit like a deferred mid-life crisis ...
Interestingly, according to http://www.innerself.com/Astrology/uranus.htm, 18-21 is the time of the first Uranus event of significance [the Square, significantly affected by Saturn transits], followed by Uranus Trine in mid-20s when people leave their parent's nest, Uranus opposition when people have a mid-life crisis, the 2nd Uranus square at 59-65 [which I'm not quite at yet] and the Uranus return at 82-84: have a look at the link :) ).
So, let me summarise all this.
Physical maturity:
- probably still happens around the completion of puberty, although changes and further development still happen after that.
Social maturity:
- achieved by moving out of one's parent's home and functioning effectively as an independent adult (with a note that the gap between physical and social maturity can be an inherently problematic time).
Emotional maturity:
- ability to defer gratification;
- the ability to form and sustain mutually fulfilling relationships;
- good manners;
- the ability to accept valid criticism/correction without falling to pieces; and
- empathy.
Mental maturity:
- an adequate basic education;
- the ability to think independently (not be duped).
Spiritual maturity:
- acceptance of change and intelligent participation in it by choosing to grow constructively;
- being able to look beyond the world one has grown up in to what is of lasting importance (i.e., "not being duped by society");
- being able to see the caring behind emotionally confronting behaviour (i.e., not being duped by people who put on a facade of being nice); and
- being able to identify own mistakes and address them without having to be kicked up the backside.
Functional maturity:
- the ability to be given a task and not need excessive supervision or motivation to satisfactorily undertake it.
Overall maturity:
- experiencing a Saturn return.
So, in my "system", one must be at least 28years old to be mature. That doesn't worry me: I'm way out the other side, well past the ancient Roman Empire ideal age of 43 years old (thinking about what a Uranus return means, actually :D ), and one achieves maturity at differing times in the various parts of one’s life.
Love, light, hugs and blessings
Gnwmythr
This post's photo is yet to be posted
Tags: personal characteristics, personal responsibility, attitudes, change, maturity, immaturity,
First published: Saturday 20th June, 2009
Last edited: Saturday 20th June, 2009
Let's begin by considering physical maturity.
Biologically, this is often indicated by the ability to reproduce. Animals are often considered physically mature at this point in their development, and I suspect that, in simpler times, many millennia in the past, humans were also considered mature at around that point.
I mentioned "in simpler times".
In today's world, survival is more complicated than it was in hunter-gatherer societies. In those societies, "work" to survive was, I have read, around 25-30hours per week. Now, in the materialistic, consumeristic western world, working weeks are often at least 35 hours, maybe up to 70 hours for some professionals/small business owners/driven people (I occasionally joke with my partner about "retiring to a 5 day, 40 hour week :) ), and education to significant standards of literacy and numeracy is almost essential.
Today, maturity - let’s call it "social maturity" - is generally defined as being at around 18 years of age. At that point, many societies allow young people to vote, be independent of parents, etc. A better way to define this would be the ability to function as an independent being in whatever society one is in. In Neanderthal society, that maybe meant having your own campfire and contributing to hunting and gathering. In today's western (developed) society, this is - in my opinion: keep your own thinking caps on and activated! - characterised by moving out of one's parents home. Unless you have a valid excuse such as a disability, if you haven't moved out and lived as an independent adult, you have not yet attained social maturity. To move out and live independently requires skills such as the ability to plan and prepare nutritious meals, budgeting, getting and keeping an adequate (legal) income and knowledge of legal requirements such as voting, not assaulting people or being a thief, etc. (Mind you, I do support things such as lowering voting age to 16 - or, at the very least, allowing those who are prepared to join the armed forces and potentially put their lives on the line for their country to be able to vote, if they are under the current voting age: to be able to be killed in a conflict in which you have no say is, to me, slightly more immoral than being able to be killed without a say ...)
The discrepancy between physical and social maturity has, in my opinion, been a problem at times: teenagers have bodies that for thousands of years were considered mature, but live in a society where they are not allowed to act as independent beings. (This is a bit like the problem of our dietary cravings being based on famine-feast conditions, rather than today's world of - for MOST of those in DEVELOPED nations - plenty [the qualification is because of poverty and homelessness].) Some of that is being addressed - for instance, some societies have ages of consent which are around 16 years old.
However, some of that discrepancy between physical and social maturity is, I consider, beneficial: being pregnant as a teenager in a society of Neanderthals, where life would be over when you lost your teeth at around 40years of age, where you were able to hunt or gather to help your band survive as a teenager, and where the band would probably help you without question, is probably less devastating than today's society where teenage parents are judged harshly, rarely adequately supported and may suffer from reduced opportunities for education.
In either case, starting to have sex does NOT show maturity, whether it is at below the legal age of consent (which, in many cases, is arguably too high or, in some cases, too low - and the discrepancy between same sex and opposite sex ages of consent is abhorrent, wrong and unjustifiable) or above, possibly well above. I've known, as I was growing and still at school, other kids who started having sex very early. They, despite a bravado that they were more mature and somehow inherently better people than other kids who chose not to have sex (and none of that was for religious reasons: the current neo-Christian fundamentalism hadn't made itself felt in that quiet little part of Queensland at that time - and maybe hasn't yet!) because of having had sex and "relationships" (VERY big quotation marks), were actually more probably just reacting thoughtlessly to genetic drivers (particularly the "selfish gene") and showing their immaturity by failing to understand what being an adult meant. For starters, they were NOT better human beings. (Also, I wonder if they went through the too common teenage whinges about housework and parties at home, and didn't think about contributing to the household economics ... if they did, they only confirm their immaturity.)
There is an issue which is very relevant here: emotional maturity.
Emotional maturity is largely independent of physical and mental maturity. I know people in their 30s, 40s and older who I consider far less emotionally mature than some teenagers. (That does NOT mean that all teenagers are emotionally mature! It certainly does not mean that any teenager is necessarily more mature than the adults around them.) Some of those older people are in the engineering profession that I currently labour in. I wish we made as widespread use of "Emotional Intelligence" (or "Emotional Quotient") tests as we did of IQ (Intelligence Quotient) tests. IQ is, to me, of far less importance than EQ.
Emotional maturity is, in my opinion, most characterised by the ability to defer gratification. The immature want pleasure, and want it NOW! In children, this immaturity may show as tantrums; in older people (including teenagers), it tends to show as materialism/consumerism - HAVING to have the latest gimmick or gizmo, or compulsive shopping (I am NOT referring to shopping occasionally for pleasure here), or being surprised when others don't share your consumerism/materialism. It is also a large part of the reason the plant is being screwed over environmentally, as consumerism/materialism (look the terms up on Wikipedia if you wish) in the developed world uses a massive amount of resources.
Another vaguely related issue here is population growth, which is, in my opinion, an environmental crime. Population growth happens for a wide range of reasons, but one of the key ones is the urge to have children - to leave something of oneself behind in the world, for posterity. Having "replacement numbers" of children is fine (although there are social issues such as discrimination against same sex couples, poverty and child abuse which need to be corrected. One of the ulitmate signs of maturity is to control this powerful biological urge and have no more than "replacement numbers" of children. (Read "The Selfish Gene", by Richard Dawkins, for some thoughts on this issue.)
One other aspect of emotional maturity I wish to mention here is the ability to form and sustain mutually fulfilling relationships. This requires communication, deferred gratification, self knowledge and a whole host of other skills. It is another very good measure of emotional maturity. Good manners is, in my opinion, an offshoot of this.
I have come across people who thing being confronting or rude (they call it "challenging") is good, or a sign of being evolved. Some times - very few times - it is. Most times it is not - all the times I have experienced it, it was simply boorish, intellectually arrogant behaviour (what would be called "being a troll" in internet groups). My karma must have improved quite a bit on this aspect: I haven't been subjected to that for quite some years now. (The fact that I experienced it at all suggests to me that I probably exhibited the same behaviour myself. Or perhaps it was a learning experience ... nah - that latter attitude is too much of a cop out, in my view.)
By "good manners" I do not mean following some of the old fashioned books on etiquette or following particular ideas on social intercourse (such as that you have to converse and discuss intimate details of your or others life - gossip is one of the most damaging forms of social cohesion/bonding that I know of): I mean basic courteously. Things like acknowledging other people's presence, paying attention and having some consideration of, for instance, someone who is using a walking stick and thus appears to have mobility issues, not jumping to conclusions.
Also, emotionally mature people can accept valid criticism/correction without falling to pieces. Attainment of this aspect requires working through Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs until one has good self esteem. Criticism that is malicious may have a useful element of truth in it, but criticism that is wrong is something that should be rejected.
As a final issue, I personally consider emotionally maturity is marked by the presence of empathy (which I touched on when discussing manners).
Now, mental maturity. I'm going to propose that this comprises two parts:
(1) having a basic education so one has an adequate ability to comprehend basic things (like language, numbers, science) without necessarily being an expert in anything in particular (getting to leaving level of high school will pretty much cover this); and
(2) the ability to think independently (i.e., the ability to not be duped by advertising, political "spin", or the "spin" of others such as media or false gurus [I certainly hope you've kept your thinking caps on as you read this!]).
Getting a good basic education is so fundamental to being able to think independently and critically, as well as to stimulating the developing areas of the brain, that I consider it an essential part of achieving maturity. In matters such as attaining human rights for women in developing nations, education of girls is often a fundamental prerequisite.
Good education often covers critical thinking.
Now spiritual maturity. This, incidentally, is not the final version of maturity that I will consider :) It is, however, a development of the previous versions of maturity, and is reliant upon achieving physical, social, emotional and mental maturity.
Spiritual maturity is, to me, defined by:
(i) acceptance of the fact that change is inevitable, and one can best manage that by choosing to grow constructively (towards being all that one can be);
(ii) being able to look beyond the world one has grown up in, and see behind the barriers of social norms, socialisation and expectations placed upon us to what is of lasting, valid importance to the spirit/psyche/soul of oneself and others (I could refer to this as "not being duped by society");
(iii) being able to see the caring behind emotionally confronting behaviour (in a sense, this means not being duped by people who put on a facade of being nice); and
(iv) being able to identify own mistakes and address them without having to be kicked up the backside.
One definition I considered and ultimately rejected for this version of maturity is:
"giving serious, BALANCED consideration to the impact one has on others and the world, but without sacrificing oneself for others (one could say this requires, in essence, a balance between Left Hand Path and Right Hand Path, or the ability to look one's darker aspects in the face and accept, integrate and love those parts of oneself without being consumed by them)"
I think the points I have come up with cover this adequately.
The last point I listed under spiritual maturity leads me to a new topic: what I call "functional maturity". Unlike spiritual maturity, this is not dependent on other maturities, although mental and emotional maturity are probably going to happen first. My definition of this is:
- being able to be given a task and not need excessive supervision or motivation to satisfactorily undertake it.
Young children (not teenagers) need a high level of guidance to complete tasks - it is how they learn. Adults should not need that same level of guidance: they should be able to do some thinking about this task is to be done, and get it under way (with appropriate checks back to the originator of the request).
Finally, I have an aspect I have, for the purposes of this blog, chosen to call "general/overall maturity". My measure of this is experiencing a Saturn Return (at around 28-30yrs), which is when one things one has not attended to adequately in the first part of one's life come back to bite one on the bum. So ... if you've attained a wide range of the types of maturity I've outlined here, but have neglected one, that one is what life will tend to throw up in your face. It's a bit of a "catch all" provision. Unfortunately, it doesn't work as a universal thing, as I know people in their 30s who are still self absorbed gits, and older people who are also failing on some aspect of maturity.
I'm personally working through some issues - maybe as a result of my Uranus return - it's probably a bit like a deferred mid-life crisis ...
Interestingly, according to http://www.innerself.com/Astrology/uranus.htm, 18-21 is the time of the first Uranus event of significance [the Square, significantly affected by Saturn transits], followed by Uranus Trine in mid-20s when people leave their parent's nest, Uranus opposition when people have a mid-life crisis, the 2nd Uranus square at 59-65 [which I'm not quite at yet] and the Uranus return at 82-84: have a look at the link :) ).
So, let me summarise all this.
Physical maturity:
- probably still happens around the completion of puberty, although changes and further development still happen after that.
Social maturity:
- achieved by moving out of one's parent's home and functioning effectively as an independent adult (with a note that the gap between physical and social maturity can be an inherently problematic time).
Emotional maturity:
- ability to defer gratification;
- the ability to form and sustain mutually fulfilling relationships;
- good manners;
- the ability to accept valid criticism/correction without falling to pieces; and
- empathy.
Mental maturity:
- an adequate basic education;
- the ability to think independently (not be duped).
Spiritual maturity:
- acceptance of change and intelligent participation in it by choosing to grow constructively;
- being able to look beyond the world one has grown up in to what is of lasting importance (i.e., "not being duped by society");
- being able to see the caring behind emotionally confronting behaviour (i.e., not being duped by people who put on a facade of being nice); and
- being able to identify own mistakes and address them without having to be kicked up the backside.
Functional maturity:
- the ability to be given a task and not need excessive supervision or motivation to satisfactorily undertake it.
Overall maturity:
- experiencing a Saturn return.
So, in my "system", one must be at least 28years old to be mature. That doesn't worry me: I'm way out the other side, well past the ancient Roman Empire ideal age of 43 years old (thinking about what a Uranus return means, actually :D ), and one achieves maturity at differing times in the various parts of one’s life.
Love, light, hugs and blessings
Gnwmythr
This post's photo is yet to be posted
Tags: personal characteristics, personal responsibility, attitudes, change, maturity, immaturity,
First published: Saturday 20th June, 2009
Last edited: Saturday 20th June, 2009
Monday, 8 June 2009
Post No. 060 - The Middle Ages and Today's Psychic Sewers
If you go back a few hundred years to when Europeans had forgotten about hygiene, we had the situation where sewers ran down the main street. Cess pits (their version of toilets) overflowed into the drain in the middle of the street, and everything was thrown into that drain. It was a terrible time to live in, with diseases rampant, and people dying or blowing themselves up at night by closing out the night air, which was thought to be evil, which allowed the noxious and sometimes explosive gases to build up in their homes.
How smugly we can look back at those times, and pity those people for being so ill-informed.
What a damn shame we are as ignorant in our way as they were.
We live, today, in the psychic equivalent of those open sewers. People generally do not know how to keep their energies to themselves, or do not deal constructively with issues/problems, and the overall effect is to create a unhealthy or even dangerous psychic environment.
And we do generally do not even see this as a problem.
If someone allowed their property to become overgrown and infested with vermin, their neighbours would call upon the Council to have the place cleaned up for the good of all.
But we do not do the same when it comes to psychic world - we get offended about "attacks on our personality", or say "what a load of crap!", or try to defend a non-existent liberty.
I look forward to the day when we take pyshic health & well being and being reponsible psychically as such a mundane matters that it is taught in schools, and Councils will do their bit to make sure people don't project their energies - without trying to force them to be different people.
That's an interesting balance, don't you think? Not ptojecting your energies but staying a grumpy old curmudgeon if you want. How would such a thing be acheived, I wonder, in such times? How could it be acheived now, I wonder?
(Psst - look up closing your aura, grounding and centering and personal responsibility!)
Love, light, hugs and blessings
Gnwmythr
This post's photo is yet to be posted
Tags: personal responsibility, personal characteristics, grounding, interactions, interpersonal interactions, lifestyles, protection, Psychic attack, psychic health, respect, responsibility,
First published: Monday 8th June, 2009
Last edited: Monday 8th June, 2009
How smugly we can look back at those times, and pity those people for being so ill-informed.
What a damn shame we are as ignorant in our way as they were.
We live, today, in the psychic equivalent of those open sewers. People generally do not know how to keep their energies to themselves, or do not deal constructively with issues/problems, and the overall effect is to create a unhealthy or even dangerous psychic environment.
And we do generally do not even see this as a problem.
If someone allowed their property to become overgrown and infested with vermin, their neighbours would call upon the Council to have the place cleaned up for the good of all.
But we do not do the same when it comes to psychic world - we get offended about "attacks on our personality", or say "what a load of crap!", or try to defend a non-existent liberty.
I look forward to the day when we take pyshic health & well being and being reponsible psychically as such a mundane matters that it is taught in schools, and Councils will do their bit to make sure people don't project their energies - without trying to force them to be different people.
That's an interesting balance, don't you think? Not ptojecting your energies but staying a grumpy old curmudgeon if you want. How would such a thing be acheived, I wonder, in such times? How could it be acheived now, I wonder?
(Psst - look up closing your aura, grounding and centering and personal responsibility!)
Love, light, hugs and blessings
Gnwmythr
This post's photo is yet to be posted
Tags: personal responsibility, personal characteristics, grounding, interactions, interpersonal interactions, lifestyles, protection, Psychic attack, psychic health, respect, responsibility,
First published: Monday 8th June, 2009
Last edited: Monday 8th June, 2009
Post No. 059 - Chakras and "push-pull"
I’ve written about chakras before (see http://gnwmythr.blogspot.com/2007/10/secret-science-of-hugs.html). In a simplistic sense, they are generally described as “energy centres” – places where energy can be added relatively easily, places where blockages can cause problems (e.g., difficulty releasing emotional pain, physical symptoms/problems such as pain [e.g., headaches] or functional problems [e.g., difficulty with clairvoyance for the “3rd Eye” chakra or clairaudience with the throat chakra]).
They are like energy hearts – pumps driving energy round the various energy pathways we have in our non-physical body.
If you wish to achieve a particular non-physical effect, effective use of chakras can help that. For instance, it is fairly widely known that the “3rd Eye” chakra, that one located in the forehead region, is associated with clairvoyance. “opening” that chakra (which basically means stimulating it) can potentially enhance clairvoyance (I use the word potentially as there are so many other factors which can have an influence here).
The forms of stimulation are generally through visualisation, but colours, scents and sex can also stimulate chakras (sex can – under certain circumstances - lead to stimulation of the Kundalini). After “opening”, most forms of training emphasise “closing” the chakra, which does not stop the functioning of the chakra: it just returns it to a normal state.
Now, a few facts which are less well known.
Our energy structure is an evolving thing: humans are evolving more chakras. This is an idea I first came across in Shirley Maclaine’s books (although, in hindsight, Rampa also touches on this), but it has also been elaborated on in Katrina Raphael’s “The Crystalline Transmission”. In my case, I now use a thirteen chakra system.
Next: our chakras are point of connection between various levels of our being. Hence, our “Earth Star” chakra is a connection point to the physical world, our Base Chakra is a connection to our physical body, the 2nd Chakra is a connection to our etheric, the Solar Plexus Chakra is a connection to the lower astral, the Heart Chakra is a connection to the higher astral, etc.
When people die, the connection between the person and the physical body, etheric and lower astral ends: this is sometimes seen as a Silver Cord between the navel of the physical body and the image of a navel in an astral body parting. (The base and 2nd chakra cords part as well, but that tends to be less “visible” as it is within the body/auric confines.)
The higher cords don’t part as the soul is still connected to those bodies. (Rampa talks about “incarnations” onto the astral plane from higher planes, which I find quite interesting.)
To rephrase what I have been writing about slightly: each level is sustained (in an energetic sense) by a higher frequency level. That chakra is a connection point to a specific level.
We can use that connection to connect to those levels.
For instance, if you want to do some work on the astral plane, try using shamanic techniques to go through that chakra.
However, my main focus in this post is using chakras tactically/strategically in situations of psychic attack.
Before I go into that, it may be useful for any serious readers to review my past articles on the topic of psychic attack”
http://gnwmythr.blogspot.com/2007/06/psychic-attack-energy-protection-and.html
http://gnwmythr.blogspot.com/2007/11/protection.html
http://gnwmythr.blogspot.com/2008/03/know-thyself-be-thyself-and-occlumency.html
http://gnwmythr.blogspot.com/2008/07/psychic-attack-being-caught-out.html
Since writing those articles, I have come across a book by Kerr Cuhulain “Magickal Self Defense: A Quantum Approach to Warding”, (Pub. Llewellyn, 2008; ISBN 978-0-7387-1219-2). In that book, the author talks about an adaptation of a martial art technique called “push-pull” to psychic self defence.
The basis of “push-pull” is that, if your opponent pushes, you pull, and if your opponent pulls, you push. If someone is trying to direct negative energy against you, pull that energy hard (e.g., by grabbing it with gloved hands and pulling as you connect it to, say, Mother Earth, a tornado of light, etc) and get your opponent off balance. If someone is trying to drain you, or perhaps a protective shield (“ward”) you have created, take their connection and hook it up to the Universe – they’ll find it a lot harder to drain the Universe than your shield.
This is something I have tried (keeping in mind that psychic “attack” can occur with things as simple as someone “thinking ill” of you, and I have found it works quite well. I like the technique also as it is what I would consider “non-violent”: you are not retaliating, it is almost like a spiritual form of Aikido.
As a further development of this, it is possible to check what level the energy (or energies) the attack is on – for instance, most emotional attack is on the level of the solar plexus, as it is emotionally based. Given this, it is worth considering using an “outflanking” manoeuvre, perhaps stimulating the attackers “higher” emotions, so that they perhaps reconsider what they are doing – which would require projecting positive energy to your attacker on the heart and crown levels. The Crown Chakra is needed to direct the emotions being triggered through inspiration; remember, the person is someone who is and is capable of indulging in attack, so they aren’t necessarily going just automatically feel nobler emotions towards you simply because you have stimulated the point by which such emotions can come into being.
As a digression (at this time – I’ll come back to this in future posts), to be “jealous” or “angry” or “loving” or “lazy” or any particular “emotion” (although I do not consider anger an emotion – see http://gnwmythr.blogspot.com/2007/10/anger-is-noit-emotion.html), you need to, in effect, pull those energies in through the appropriate chakra into this world, or latch on to some existing energies, and use them. You have a choice in all situations: you do not have to behave in any particular way (although, granted, you may have established a habit of reacting in a particular way). Learning channelling – particularly in situations of rescue - can help people to overcome their habits of using particular energies, as they will, for a while, relinquish control of their body to another spirit, who almost inevitably leaves some of their energies behind, so the medium re-enters their body and has to practice not using energies that are “laying about the place, in a sense.
Building a little further on that point, I mentioned that chakras return to a normal state of being. Not all chakras are at the same energy level, and to some extent, it is possible to work out where a person is at” in life by looking at the various states of energy in the chakras. For instance, someone who is mentally focused in life will tend to have more activity in the head chakras; someone who is emotionally giving will have more activity in the heart and solar plexus chakras; someone who is what used to be termed “base” (lives for the day, addicted to pleasure) may have the base and 2nd chakras more active.
These states of being may all be valid, when viewed from the long term perspective of the soul, a perspective taken over many lifetimes.
If there is an “ideal” to pursue on this aspect, it is the activation/use of any combination of chakras which is spiritually best for a particular situation. For instance, someone who has been focusing on communication (throat chakra) may find themselves in physical peril, and so need to boost the base and 2nd chakras for survival reasons. Or someone may wish to grow their own food (or some of it, at any rate), and so need to stimulate the Earth Star. At this time in this Earth’s evolution, few people live in more than a few of their chakras – the lack of connection to the Earth Star is a particular problem in light of what is happening to this world.
Returning to the point I was making about using different levels of reality to address psychic attack, perhaps you can now understand why it may be necessary to stimulate levels the person has not used if you wish them to stop their attack.
As you do this, keep in mind the other person’s free will. They have no right to attack you, but if they desist, you have no right to do anything further to them.
I’ll leave that post at that for now.
Love, light, hugs and blessings
Gnwmythr
This post's photo is yet to be posted.
Tags: chakras, energy work, protection, practice, martial arts, cross-fertilisation (ideas), response, speed of response, strength,
First published: 8th June, 2009
Last edited: Saturday 26th June, 2010 (tags added)
They are like energy hearts – pumps driving energy round the various energy pathways we have in our non-physical body.
If you wish to achieve a particular non-physical effect, effective use of chakras can help that. For instance, it is fairly widely known that the “3rd Eye” chakra, that one located in the forehead region, is associated with clairvoyance. “opening” that chakra (which basically means stimulating it) can potentially enhance clairvoyance (I use the word potentially as there are so many other factors which can have an influence here).
The forms of stimulation are generally through visualisation, but colours, scents and sex can also stimulate chakras (sex can – under certain circumstances - lead to stimulation of the Kundalini). After “opening”, most forms of training emphasise “closing” the chakra, which does not stop the functioning of the chakra: it just returns it to a normal state.
Now, a few facts which are less well known.
Our energy structure is an evolving thing: humans are evolving more chakras. This is an idea I first came across in Shirley Maclaine’s books (although, in hindsight, Rampa also touches on this), but it has also been elaborated on in Katrina Raphael’s “The Crystalline Transmission”. In my case, I now use a thirteen chakra system.
Next: our chakras are point of connection between various levels of our being. Hence, our “Earth Star” chakra is a connection point to the physical world, our Base Chakra is a connection to our physical body, the 2nd Chakra is a connection to our etheric, the Solar Plexus Chakra is a connection to the lower astral, the Heart Chakra is a connection to the higher astral, etc.
When people die, the connection between the person and the physical body, etheric and lower astral ends: this is sometimes seen as a Silver Cord between the navel of the physical body and the image of a navel in an astral body parting. (The base and 2nd chakra cords part as well, but that tends to be less “visible” as it is within the body/auric confines.)
The higher cords don’t part as the soul is still connected to those bodies. (Rampa talks about “incarnations” onto the astral plane from higher planes, which I find quite interesting.)
To rephrase what I have been writing about slightly: each level is sustained (in an energetic sense) by a higher frequency level. That chakra is a connection point to a specific level.
We can use that connection to connect to those levels.
For instance, if you want to do some work on the astral plane, try using shamanic techniques to go through that chakra.
However, my main focus in this post is using chakras tactically/strategically in situations of psychic attack.
Before I go into that, it may be useful for any serious readers to review my past articles on the topic of psychic attack”
http://gnwmythr.blogspot.com/2007/06/psychic-attack-energy-protection-and.html
http://gnwmythr.blogspot.com/2007/11/protection.html
http://gnwmythr.blogspot.com/2008/03/know-thyself-be-thyself-and-occlumency.html
http://gnwmythr.blogspot.com/2008/07/psychic-attack-being-caught-out.html
Since writing those articles, I have come across a book by Kerr Cuhulain “Magickal Self Defense: A Quantum Approach to Warding”, (Pub. Llewellyn, 2008; ISBN 978-0-7387-1219-2). In that book, the author talks about an adaptation of a martial art technique called “push-pull” to psychic self defence.
The basis of “push-pull” is that, if your opponent pushes, you pull, and if your opponent pulls, you push. If someone is trying to direct negative energy against you, pull that energy hard (e.g., by grabbing it with gloved hands and pulling as you connect it to, say, Mother Earth, a tornado of light, etc) and get your opponent off balance. If someone is trying to drain you, or perhaps a protective shield (“ward”) you have created, take their connection and hook it up to the Universe – they’ll find it a lot harder to drain the Universe than your shield.
This is something I have tried (keeping in mind that psychic “attack” can occur with things as simple as someone “thinking ill” of you, and I have found it works quite well. I like the technique also as it is what I would consider “non-violent”: you are not retaliating, it is almost like a spiritual form of Aikido.
As a further development of this, it is possible to check what level the energy (or energies) the attack is on – for instance, most emotional attack is on the level of the solar plexus, as it is emotionally based. Given this, it is worth considering using an “outflanking” manoeuvre, perhaps stimulating the attackers “higher” emotions, so that they perhaps reconsider what they are doing – which would require projecting positive energy to your attacker on the heart and crown levels. The Crown Chakra is needed to direct the emotions being triggered through inspiration; remember, the person is someone who is and is capable of indulging in attack, so they aren’t necessarily going just automatically feel nobler emotions towards you simply because you have stimulated the point by which such emotions can come into being.
As a digression (at this time – I’ll come back to this in future posts), to be “jealous” or “angry” or “loving” or “lazy” or any particular “emotion” (although I do not consider anger an emotion – see http://gnwmythr.blogspot.com/2007/10/anger-is-noit-emotion.html), you need to, in effect, pull those energies in through the appropriate chakra into this world, or latch on to some existing energies, and use them. You have a choice in all situations: you do not have to behave in any particular way (although, granted, you may have established a habit of reacting in a particular way). Learning channelling – particularly in situations of rescue - can help people to overcome their habits of using particular energies, as they will, for a while, relinquish control of their body to another spirit, who almost inevitably leaves some of their energies behind, so the medium re-enters their body and has to practice not using energies that are “laying about the place, in a sense.
Building a little further on that point, I mentioned that chakras return to a normal state of being. Not all chakras are at the same energy level, and to some extent, it is possible to work out where a person is at” in life by looking at the various states of energy in the chakras. For instance, someone who is mentally focused in life will tend to have more activity in the head chakras; someone who is emotionally giving will have more activity in the heart and solar plexus chakras; someone who is what used to be termed “base” (lives for the day, addicted to pleasure) may have the base and 2nd chakras more active.
These states of being may all be valid, when viewed from the long term perspective of the soul, a perspective taken over many lifetimes.
If there is an “ideal” to pursue on this aspect, it is the activation/use of any combination of chakras which is spiritually best for a particular situation. For instance, someone who has been focusing on communication (throat chakra) may find themselves in physical peril, and so need to boost the base and 2nd chakras for survival reasons. Or someone may wish to grow their own food (or some of it, at any rate), and so need to stimulate the Earth Star. At this time in this Earth’s evolution, few people live in more than a few of their chakras – the lack of connection to the Earth Star is a particular problem in light of what is happening to this world.
Returning to the point I was making about using different levels of reality to address psychic attack, perhaps you can now understand why it may be necessary to stimulate levels the person has not used if you wish them to stop their attack.
As you do this, keep in mind the other person’s free will. They have no right to attack you, but if they desist, you have no right to do anything further to them.
I’ll leave that post at that for now.
Love, light, hugs and blessings
Gnwmythr
This post's photo is yet to be posted.
Tags: chakras, energy work, protection, practice, martial arts, cross-fertilisation (ideas), response, speed of response, strength,
First published: 8th June, 2009
Last edited: Saturday 26th June, 2010 (tags added)
Tuesday, 2 June 2009
Post No. 058 - Healing
This post is about a skill I learned back in the 80s: what I call channelled energy healing. You do NOT need to be greatly skilled, not possessed of great health and high energy levels yourself to do (channelled energy) healing. To quote from some notes I have been updating on healing:
What I was taught to do to begin was:
Useful contact is normally on or above the chakras, or at joints (which are minor chakras). Don’t touch anywhere your patient doesn’t feel comfortable (ask if you haven’t worked with them before). One thing to watch is trying to give healing into the palms of your patient if they are also a healer or potential healer: that can result in two energy flows trying to compete against each other.
Now, the next topic: pay attention to your patient.
To be a little facetious, there’s not much point closing your eyes (which a number of healers do), healing someone and failing to notice that he/she/ze has had a heart attack. If the patient is getting worse, stop. You may not be doing anything wrong, but that is immaterial: “first do no harm”. Stop.
In the same way that not all medicines developed by modern medical science are suitable for everyone, not everyone will always be suited to receiving healing in this general way (and this applies also to Reiki: not everyone is suited to that technique, in my opinion), or possibly not to receiving healing from a particular person (and that can change: you may be OK to receive or give healing on day, but not necessarily at some other time). The main concern here is (lack of) compatibility of energies as channelled.
Two people may be extremely compatible people, even partners, but the healing energies they work with may not be compatible. There could be, for instance, a tendency for one person to channel, say, orange energy as a result of past lives working with the God Mercury, which may be a different type of energy to that being lived now (which could be, say, in harmony with what are termed “Green Ray” energies. Ideally, the healer concerned needs to update their healing techniques from old habits, but in the short term, pay attention and stop if need be.
It could also be that, if you are healing someone for the first time, they are wary of you (possibly with some justification if you are being too pushy, or are using this as an excuse to get closer to the person), want subconsciously to hold on to something (possibly because they feel they need to solve the problem themselves [and they could be correct]) or there is a shield or barrier of some sort. These are the sort of problems I came across from time to time while healing in spiritualist churches. I also came across people who would begin trancing or exhibiting other inappropriate behaviour: the solution there is to stop, firmly talk the person back to a normal state of being (if need be, some water in their face will help, albeit at the price of a headache), and tell them to go away until they learn some basic grounding and/or psychic self discipline (that sort of behaviour is certainly nothing to be impressed by). (I also came across some people who were healing junkies: they would keep getting haling at the expense of taking some personal responsibility for their energy states of being – THIS DOES NOT APPLY TO PEOPLE WITH GENUINE HEALTH PROBLEMS, including CFS. The latter will need ongoing, sustained healing.)
How long you heal depends on how much healing the patient needs, how long you stay relaxed and what rate you can channel at. In most cases, 20minutes is long enough. With practice, your intuition will tell you when you’ve finished, or you (or your patient) may feel the healing slow or stop. (Then again, on or both of you may feel nothing, despite healing flowing. You could also, if working with a group, ask someone else to check with their guides/helpers/Higher Self whether or not you have done as much as you are supposed to.) It is worth asking your patient how they feel before you finish, as they may want some part of their body given direct healing - they may not know that direct contact is not necessary, and hence, for instance, may want a sore finger touched and healed before they will let go of that pain.
On that, whenever you are healing, informed consent applies. You do NOT have the right to touch any person in a way that they are uncomfortable with (and you could quite possibly be the subject of legal action if you do). Such contact is not needed – indeed, it is possible to heal without any direct contact, just by having your hands close to the patient. In fact, it is possible to heal at a very considerable distance, but that is a topic for another email.
When you finish:
Love, light, hugs and blessings
Gnwmythr
This post's photo is yet to be posted.
Tags: healing, energy work, protection, prayer,
First published: Tuesday 2nd June, 2009
Last edited: Tuesday 2nd June, 2009
(1) the energy is NOT yours, it comes from other sources (such as energy channelled to you from your guides/helpers/Higher Self, and psychic energy that can be accessed from Mother Earth, the Universe, etc – you might even find that you get a healing boost as well);
(2) when you have commenced the healing, you do not need great psychic powers to determine the “right” place to put the healing in: much as the physical body knows where nutrients, vitamins and minerals are needed (we don’t have fingernails drop off because things like Silica were “wrongly” applied to the digestive system rather than the fingernail), the non-physical body (bodies, actually) have circulation systems (meridians and chakras) and is well and truly capable of taking the energy to wherever it is needed.
I usually start explanations of healing with a bit of a blurb along the lines of the following:
Ø the many bodies we have can be considered to be like the skins of an onion, or a set of tuning forks at a similar frequency: if something presses on one skin of an onion, it will affect those nearby; if the tuning forks are close enough in frequency, when one gets some energy and starts vibrating, those near it will also; when on of your bodies is affected in some way, that will affect others
Ø this is a two way street:
- if something drags down the energy levels of your physical body, that can also “lower your spirits” as the saying goes;
- if one of your nonphysical bodies is drained, it can manifest as physical health problems;
- is something boosts your physical system (e.g., good nutrition, rest and exercise), that can boost your nonphysical bodies;
- if something boosts your nonphysical bodies, that will potentially improve emotional and mental state of being, but in the classic sense can help the physical body to heal itself.
It should also be noted that: - if something drags down the energy levels of your physical body, that can also “lower your spirits” as the saying goes;
- if one of your nonphysical bodies is drained, it can manifest as physical health problems;
- is something boosts your physical system (e.g., good nutrition, rest and exercise), that can boost your nonphysical bodies;
- if something boosts your nonphysical bodies, that will potentially improve emotional and mental state of being, but in the classic sense can help the physical body to heal itself.
Ø physical and psychic problems may also limit themselves to only that level;
Ø there is a pragmatic aspect to this: if a problem is sized, say, five units, three units worth of energy won’t fix it: that is where practice (we generally get better with practice, but that is a long term view :) ), working with other people (who provide more energy) and magic (which accesses other sources of energy such as that of various Deities, and other skills & knowledge such as that of Ancestors) come into play.
OK, so how do you actually do this healing thing? What I was taught to do to begin was:
(1) establish protection
(2) ask my guides/helpers/Higher Self/Deity to channel healing through me to the person being healed as is for the Highest Spiritual Good.
Now, Highest Spiritual Good. I’m going to cheat here, and quote from the notes from one of my workshops:
No matter how good your application of the techniques we will be learning about in this workshop, they may not work for you in all situations.
This may be because the person or situation being worked on is meant to experience something unpleasant or difficult or challenging. This may also be because that is needed to motivate someone into learning thoroughly, or to be a strengthening experience, to repay a karmic debt or perhaps you may have agreed to take something on to see whether others would help you (i.e., as a test of a friend, perhaps).
There is a flip side to this as well: it may be for the Highest Spiritual Good to have what is being worked towards happen, and so that may happen despite the combination of you and crystal(s) not having the ability to ordinarily manifest that.
Protection can be by a simple mental request (a prayer) for protection, casting a circle, or visualisation (.g., of a Cone of Light, a Golden Pyramid or some other device which surrounds you, the patient, others present and the place being worked in (including above and below). An adaptation of one prayer I’ve used for this purpose is:
May the Goddess guide, nurture, protect and heal all of us present here, whatever our form, existence or purpose for coming here may be.
We ask that the assistance be both within and without ourselves:
- within, by increasing our spiritual strengths and our love, and by reducing our weaknesses;
- without, through the assistance of our and other suitable guides, helpers, Higher Selves, the Ancestors and by being connected to positive energy centres
We ask that the protection without include a Pyramid of Light about this place, existing in all dimensions. We ask that our Pyramid be kept continuously clear of all negative or discordant units, and free of all outside negative influences.
May this prayer, and everything that is don, thought or said by anyone present or connected to here in any way, be only for the Highest Spiritual Good. As a sign of our commitment to this request, we ask that all that we intentionally do to others be done immediately to us, so that we may know no harm is being done.
So mote it be.
Similarly, to start the healing process, ask. These do not necessarily have to be complicated. One healing prayer I’ve heard of was “Lt ‘er rip”. It all depends on what is comfortable for you and your healing team. My prayer is usually
“I ask for healing to go through me to this patient, as is for the HSG.”
At this point, I’ll make a few comments about Reiki. I have not done any courses in Reiki, as I do not consider that I need to. The form of channelled energy healing I was taught works – without me having been attuned, or given a formalised system to work with, or having particular visualisations to use, or a particular way to open chakras (I consider that opening chakras should not be done in healing unless you know very well what you are doing). There can be advantages to using a formalised system – in particular, it can give new people a source of comfort around “what do I do”. I have also, in other circumstances, personally experienced the benefits that can come with initiation (including when I received my First Degree Initiation in the Correllian Tradition). However, the point is that you do NOT need to do Reiki training to be able to do effective healing. Useful contact is normally on or above the chakras, or at joints (which are minor chakras). Don’t touch anywhere your patient doesn’t feel comfortable (ask if you haven’t worked with them before). One thing to watch is trying to give healing into the palms of your patient if they are also a healer or potential healer: that can result in two energy flows trying to compete against each other.
Now, the next topic: pay attention to your patient.
To be a little facetious, there’s not much point closing your eyes (which a number of healers do), healing someone and failing to notice that he/she/ze has had a heart attack. If the patient is getting worse, stop. You may not be doing anything wrong, but that is immaterial: “first do no harm”. Stop.
In the same way that not all medicines developed by modern medical science are suitable for everyone, not everyone will always be suited to receiving healing in this general way (and this applies also to Reiki: not everyone is suited to that technique, in my opinion), or possibly not to receiving healing from a particular person (and that can change: you may be OK to receive or give healing on day, but not necessarily at some other time). The main concern here is (lack of) compatibility of energies as channelled.
Two people may be extremely compatible people, even partners, but the healing energies they work with may not be compatible. There could be, for instance, a tendency for one person to channel, say, orange energy as a result of past lives working with the God Mercury, which may be a different type of energy to that being lived now (which could be, say, in harmony with what are termed “Green Ray” energies. Ideally, the healer concerned needs to update their healing techniques from old habits, but in the short term, pay attention and stop if need be.
It could also be that, if you are healing someone for the first time, they are wary of you (possibly with some justification if you are being too pushy, or are using this as an excuse to get closer to the person), want subconsciously to hold on to something (possibly because they feel they need to solve the problem themselves [and they could be correct]) or there is a shield or barrier of some sort. These are the sort of problems I came across from time to time while healing in spiritualist churches. I also came across people who would begin trancing or exhibiting other inappropriate behaviour: the solution there is to stop, firmly talk the person back to a normal state of being (if need be, some water in their face will help, albeit at the price of a headache), and tell them to go away until they learn some basic grounding and/or psychic self discipline (that sort of behaviour is certainly nothing to be impressed by). (I also came across some people who were healing junkies: they would keep getting haling at the expense of taking some personal responsibility for their energy states of being – THIS DOES NOT APPLY TO PEOPLE WITH GENUINE HEALTH PROBLEMS, including CFS. The latter will need ongoing, sustained healing.)
How long you heal depends on how much healing the patient needs, how long you stay relaxed and what rate you can channel at. In most cases, 20minutes is long enough. With practice, your intuition will tell you when you’ve finished, or you (or your patient) may feel the healing slow or stop. (Then again, on or both of you may feel nothing, despite healing flowing. You could also, if working with a group, ask someone else to check with their guides/helpers/Higher Self whether or not you have done as much as you are supposed to.) It is worth asking your patient how they feel before you finish, as they may want some part of their body given direct healing - they may not know that direct contact is not necessary, and hence, for instance, may want a sore finger touched and healed before they will let go of that pain.
On that, whenever you are healing, informed consent applies. You do NOT have the right to touch any person in a way that they are uncomfortable with (and you could quite possibly be the subject of legal action if you do). Such contact is not needed – indeed, it is possible to heal without any direct contact, just by having your hands close to the patient. In fact, it is possible to heal at a very considerable distance, but that is a topic for another email.
When you finish:
Ø check how your patient is feeling
Ø explain that they have received psychic energy, and this tends to open them up psychically; it is therefore important that they be aware they could potentially experience light headedness, difficulty sleeping or discomfort if they do not adequately close their psychic openness – this will comprise grounding and closing the aura (if you have opened their chakras, you need to make sure they know how to close them in case you don’t adequately close the chakras)
Ø grounding is commonly done by visualising a tree root growing into the earth and anchoring your spirit bodies inside your physical, or by having something to eat or drink (non-alcoholic) or visualise a shower of energy flushing out your aura
Ø closing the aura is done by visualising oneself inside a white egg shell around the boundaries of the aura (I tend to run my hands over the outside of the aura, from the ground up, to help the sealing process)
Ø explain who to contact if they have problems
Ø say a closing prayer, such as the example given below, or open circle (whatever is appropriate for what you have done at the start of the healing session)
Ø ground and release all excess energy yourself, and close your aura
OK, the example closing prayer is as follows:
We ask that our auras be cleansed, cleared and closed. W ask that we be assisted to close down and to centre ourselves, grounding and releasing all excess energy in doing so. We ask that the pyramid be cleansed and cleared in all times, dimensions, realities, levels and spaces. We ask that all positive links, skills outcomes and other things be strengthened. We ask that the circle be cleansed, cleared and closed, but that the protection, healing and guidance continue for the Highest Spiritual Good.
So mote it be.
It sounds far more complicated than it actually is to do. Love, light, hugs and blessings
Gnwmythr
This post's photo is yet to be posted.
Tags: healing, energy work, protection, prayer,
First published: Tuesday 2nd June, 2009
Last edited: Tuesday 2nd June, 2009
Monday, 4 May 2009
Post No. 057 - If I'm Neo-Pagan, then they're Neo-Christian
This is a short personal rant.
I have heard many people claim that "pagans" should actually be identiofying as "neo-pagan". This is argued on the basis that pagans today are:
- not living as those who "originally" were pagan did
- not following the exact same practices that the "original" pagans did
- live in a vastly different world to that in which the "original" pagans did.
Which of these arguments does not apply to Christianity - particularly after the Council of Nicea? I actually have felt inclined, at times, to congratulate parts of Christianity for moving on, growing and changing with changing circumstances to stay relevant. Apparently, however, in some parts of Academia, that is A Bad Thing.
If I am expected to use the label (I'm tempted to write "the psuedo-label") "Neo-Pagan, then I expect the label (or "psudo-label") Neo-Christian to be used.
I'm afraid I think the "Neo-Pagan" thing is not a case of being accurate (some of the tenets that psuedo-label are based on are arguable, given things like hedge-witch, kitchen witch and family coven taditions), I consider it is a case of intellectual snobbery.
My apologies - normal service will now resume :)
Love, light, hugs and blessings
Gnwmythr
This post's photo is ... yet to be posted
Tags: about me, arrogance, attitudes, judging others, respect, science, bullying, cross-fertilisation (ideas),
First published: Monday 4th May, 2009
Last edited: Monday 4th May, 2009
I have heard many people claim that "pagans" should actually be identiofying as "neo-pagan". This is argued on the basis that pagans today are:
- not living as those who "originally" were pagan did
- not following the exact same practices that the "original" pagans did
- live in a vastly different world to that in which the "original" pagans did.
Which of these arguments does not apply to Christianity - particularly after the Council of Nicea? I actually have felt inclined, at times, to congratulate parts of Christianity for moving on, growing and changing with changing circumstances to stay relevant. Apparently, however, in some parts of Academia, that is A Bad Thing.
If I am expected to use the label (I'm tempted to write "the psuedo-label") "Neo-Pagan, then I expect the label (or "psudo-label") Neo-Christian to be used.
I'm afraid I think the "Neo-Pagan" thing is not a case of being accurate (some of the tenets that psuedo-label are based on are arguable, given things like hedge-witch, kitchen witch and family coven taditions), I consider it is a case of intellectual snobbery.
My apologies - normal service will now resume :)
Love, light, hugs and blessings
Gnwmythr
This post's photo is ... yet to be posted
Tags: about me, arrogance, attitudes, judging others, respect, science, bullying, cross-fertilisation (ideas),
First published: Monday 4th May, 2009
Last edited: Monday 4th May, 2009
Saturday, 8 November 2008
Post No. 056 - Musing: a new "world religion"?
One of the things the controversial author Lobsang Rampa (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lobsang_Rampa) has written about is the development of a new "world religion", in the sense that every few hundred years a new major religion seems to come along (e.g., Buddhism, Christianity, Islam, etc). He predicted that a new religion would come, with an inclusive basis (although I suspect his interpretation of "inclusive" may have been cultural and/or racial; Rampa suffers from being quite sexist at times, and shows a limited understanding of homosexuality etc). At the time I read that, when I was young (a teenager), I was quite happy to be Buddhist, and didn't put a great deal of effort into thinking about it. Now, a few decades later, I have been spiritualist, shamanka (which I understand to be the female version of the word "shaman"), Druid, Wiccan, etc, and have friends, family and acquaintances of many other faiths (including Hinduism, Judaism, and Islam) I have asome experience of the commonality behind these various religions. (I also know of some of the differences, but thjat is a topic for another time and place.)
I've talked to people doing religious study courses (and am doing a Coven based study course [see Septen Seethers] which covers a dozen established pathways). Maybe there is "room" (or perhaps "need"?) for a new, major world religion which facilitates bringing people and other paths together?
Rampa said, back in the 70s, that the leader of the new world religion had not yet been born, but that some of the coming leader's supporters were active, and preparing the world for this. I'm not aware of being one of those "supporters", incidentally :) However, it would be nice to be able to contribute to the world being better in a big way, so I'll do that in my little way by suggesting that it could be worth you, dear Reader, thinking about what you would like to see in a new "world religion", what could possibly lead you to change any current belief/disbelief system you have and join it, and what type of movement would lead you to want to be a better person.
Happy musings :)
Love, light, hugs and blessings
Gnwmythr
This post's photo is yet to be posted.
Tags: religion, about me, change, control, inventiveness, commitment, communication, leadership, personal characteristics, personal responsibility,
First published: Saturday 8th November, 2008
Last edited: Saturday 8th November, 2008
I've talked to people doing religious study courses (and am doing a Coven based study course [see Septen Seethers] which covers a dozen established pathways). Maybe there is "room" (or perhaps "need"?) for a new, major world religion which facilitates bringing people and other paths together?
Rampa said, back in the 70s, that the leader of the new world religion had not yet been born, but that some of the coming leader's supporters were active, and preparing the world for this. I'm not aware of being one of those "supporters", incidentally :) However, it would be nice to be able to contribute to the world being better in a big way, so I'll do that in my little way by suggesting that it could be worth you, dear Reader, thinking about what you would like to see in a new "world religion", what could possibly lead you to change any current belief/disbelief system you have and join it, and what type of movement would lead you to want to be a better person.
Happy musings :)
Love, light, hugs and blessings
Gnwmythr
This post's photo is yet to be posted.
Tags: religion, about me, change, control, inventiveness, commitment, communication, leadership, personal characteristics, personal responsibility,
First published: Saturday 8th November, 2008
Last edited: Saturday 8th November, 2008
Post No. 055 - A Nobody’s Laws of Psychic Stuff
When I was studying engineering, we learned a technique for predicting probable formats of equations called (I think) dimensional analysis. One night, as I idled away the time sleeping, a though came to me that it could be interesting to apply that sort of approach to the psychic (energetic) clearing that I do. I have to admit to being slightly influenced in this by some of the references to such-and-such’s laws on shows like “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” – excuse me while my aura blushes.
Anyway, the laws. I’ll give them first, and add a commentary as time permits.
I’ve called them “a nobody’s laws of psychic stuff”. I’m not quite a nobody in my local area, but I AM unknown to most of the rest of the world (and that is perfectly fine by me!), but I have chosen this step more in reaction to the egotistical addition of names to scientific discoveries, engineering papers, psychic pontifications, etc, etc, etc. Maybe this way people will look at these suggestions, and agree/disagree/pass over as trivial purely on the basis of their assessment of my proposals, rather than either favouring/disfavouring them on the basis of some alleged (or real, in the case of those who know me) source.
1.The strength of psychic effects is a function of the psychic closeness of the effecter and the effected.
2.Psychic closeness is a function of (total) activity and strength of psychic interconnections.
3.The number, activity and strength of psychic interconnections is affected by the number, activity, strength and consciousness of interactions (not only psychic interactions).
4.Psychic interconnections that are passive, whether harmonious, disharmonious or neutral, can be reactivated. Such reactivations can lead to surprising (unexpected) interactions, both pleasant, unpleasant and neutral (not only psychic interactions). They can also be altered, replaced or removed without reactivation.
5.The amount of psychic energy that is required to alter, replace, renew or remove an interconnection is a function of the strength of that interconnection. One may, however, be able to receive help or hindrance from other sources, both known and unknown, in response to matters such as past karma (good, bad or indifferent) and constructive and destructive alliances. One “good” thought does NOT outweigh a thousand “bad” thoughts, but it might trigger nine hundred and ninety nine thoughts worth of help.
6.It is said that the only constant is change. Your psychic and spiritual states of being are also subject to constant change, even if they have attained a dynamic equilibrium. (A good way of managing this constant change of state of being may be to think like a spiritual warrior, including thinking about logistics [supplies, replenishment, etc].)
Love, light, hugs and blessings
Gnwmythr
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Anyway, the laws. I’ll give them first, and add a commentary as time permits.
I’ve called them “a nobody’s laws of psychic stuff”. I’m not quite a nobody in my local area, but I AM unknown to most of the rest of the world (and that is perfectly fine by me!), but I have chosen this step more in reaction to the egotistical addition of names to scientific discoveries, engineering papers, psychic pontifications, etc, etc, etc. Maybe this way people will look at these suggestions, and agree/disagree/pass over as trivial purely on the basis of their assessment of my proposals, rather than either favouring/disfavouring them on the basis of some alleged (or real, in the case of those who know me) source.
1.The strength of psychic effects is a function of the psychic closeness of the effecter and the effected.
2.Psychic closeness is a function of (total) activity and strength of psychic interconnections.
3.The number, activity and strength of psychic interconnections is affected by the number, activity, strength and consciousness of interactions (not only psychic interactions).
4.Psychic interconnections that are passive, whether harmonious, disharmonious or neutral, can be reactivated. Such reactivations can lead to surprising (unexpected) interactions, both pleasant, unpleasant and neutral (not only psychic interactions). They can also be altered, replaced or removed without reactivation.
5.The amount of psychic energy that is required to alter, replace, renew or remove an interconnection is a function of the strength of that interconnection. One may, however, be able to receive help or hindrance from other sources, both known and unknown, in response to matters such as past karma (good, bad or indifferent) and constructive and destructive alliances. One “good” thought does NOT outweigh a thousand “bad” thoughts, but it might trigger nine hundred and ninety nine thoughts worth of help.
6.It is said that the only constant is change. Your psychic and spiritual states of being are also subject to constant change, even if they have attained a dynamic equilibrium. (A good way of managing this constant change of state of being may be to think like a spiritual warrior, including thinking about logistics [supplies, replenishment, etc].)
Love, light, hugs and blessings
Gnwmythr
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Post No. 054 - Superstitions can be codes for guides to use
OK, most cultures, and some people, have a range of superstitions – for instance, throwing salt over your shoulder to “ward off evil/devil/bad luck”, not walking under ladders, not crossing the path of a black cat (anyone ever bother to check what happens to the black cat when someone crosses its path?), wearing lucky socks/bling/underwear. Ask most reasonable people what’s behind superstitions, and they’ll often give an explanation about how superstitions have a core of some truth, and some might even talk about examples like one from Africa (which I think I first read about in one of Lyall Watson’s excellent books) where a long, complicated procedure involving virgins, certain types of food, certain exposure conditions, etc for the purpose of fixing certain types of illness just happened to also create the right conditions for growing a particular type of penicillin. Hmmm – willow bark tea and aspirin all over again, eh? And I can hear the scientific/”rational”/Vulcan minded amongst you lot, my readers (both of you – I know who you are! Ahhhh ... must stop eating certain types of food prepared by virgins in another type of way ...) talking about the value of using objective testing to find out what is essential about procedures so you don’t confuse the waffle with what is of real value.
Gnwmythr
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Tags: guidance, communication, inventiveness, mirrorology, perceptions, persistence, personal characteristics, personal responsibility,
First published: Saturday 8th November, 2008
Last edited: Saturday 8th November, 2008
Well, you know what? I agree with you.
So there.
I actually do think there is too much blind faith and desire for things to work in too many metaphysically/spiritually inclined people – which, given the sad, unduly sceptical, materialistic state of our world, is understandable (though actually counter productive, as it leads to what does work being swamped in a sea of shoddy details which feed the sceptics). We would be better off maintaining some objectivity, and lots of true scientific enquiry. But that “true scientific enquiry” does not assume things either work or they don’t: there are rules, contraindications, circumstances/people for whom things will work and others for whom it won’t work.
I always tell people, in my crystal workshops, this won’t work for all people. When we cover dowsing with a crystal pendulum, I then talk about theories that this will not work for a couple of hours each day, and that you have to be very precise in your questions (e.g., don’t ask “can you tell me if ...?”, as the crystal may well answer “yes”, meaning it can tell you, which may be WRONGLY interpreted by you to mean the answer to your 2nd question was yes), and check how each combination of you + crystal will indicate yes, no or maybe. The rules for communication can change for each combination.
And that, dear readers (both of you :) ), brings me back to superstitions.
MAYBE the reason there seems to be a kernel of truth in these for some people is that they are true for SOME people. MAYBE those people’s guides know they are inclined towards certain types of beliefs, and so they USE those beliefs to frame their communications. For instance, someone close to me has a superstition that seeing magpies has meanings: one for sorrow, two for joy, three for a girl and four for a boy, five for silvery, six for gold, seven for a story never to be told. That works for her – infallibly (well, the one and two do anyway), but doesn’t for me. However, the superstition that owls are a harbinger of death does work for me (as far as physically seing owls is concerned – that doesn’t apply to psychic visions for me, which is fortunate considering owl is one of my power animals).
Well all is said and done, superstitions are superstitions. They don’t necessarily have a rational basis that can be used universally (but neither do, say, all medicines), but, in this irrational, imperfect world, they may be being used a valid means of communication from those who are busting their guts to try and help us as best they can.
Love, light, hugs and blessingsGnwmythr
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Tags: guidance, communication, inventiveness, mirrorology, perceptions, persistence, personal characteristics, personal responsibility,
First published: Saturday 8th November, 2008
Last edited: Saturday 8th November, 2008
Post No. 053 - Reality and money
OK, we have a financial crisis on our hands at the moment: we even have people talking about the end of capitalism as we know it. Well, that may be. This world has experienced such endings before, and will continue to experience them. And, despite such endings, the world will continue to revolve on its axis as it rotates round the sun. Gravity will continue to work in much the same fashion ... sentient beings will continue to think, and living organisms will continue to seek to survive and even flourish.
Love, light, hugs and blessings
Gnwmythr
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Tags: perceptions, change, life lessons, personal responsibility, personal characteristics,
First published: Saturday 8th November, 2008
Last edited: Saturday 8th November, 2008
The reality is that the current financial crisis means not all humans will flourish, and some may not survive. But THIS crisis, unlike the nuclear threat when I was growing up, and the environmental threat that goes with our materialistic, capitalistic ways, does not threaten the physical survival of this world.
Do you know that a recent article in “The Age” (www.theage.com.au) found deforestation had annual costs of around $5trillion, and far outweighed the severity of the financial crisis?
A slightly different perspective on the matter there.
Perspective is the issue I wish to consider in this post: perspectives on money. I’ve heard money described as being an energy. Certainly in the literal sense money is a token representing value or units of work. In the case of the stock market, the monetary value of shares is largely – far TOO largely, in my opinion – a perspective on the potential money energy in each share. I have a hard, pragmatic viewpoint on this topic, and consider blue chip shares and investments that lead to tangible results (whether that be more widgets, or better education/health care/quality of life) have a greater reality than things like selling short, or trading in shares and aiming to make money out of changes in perceived value of shares.
Don’t get me wrong: I KNOW that money can be made on the stockmarket – the father of an ex of mine had given up an engineering career and spent twenty years making a very good living off trading shares when I met her. That, however, does not change my view that any system which relies so heavily on perception is in need of a reality check.
I think that also applies to the house owner who thinks that, because their house has gone up in value (according to the market) they are better off. The house has not changed in its functionality, or size. Nothing in the real world sense has changed. Be careful not to mistake perceptions for reality. If the change in value was realised by selling the house and having more tokens [“money”] “in the bank”, I would consider it real: in that case, the potential energy has been changed into tokens which have a reasonable form of reality.
Those tokens, however, are not always assured. Financial crises – such as the one we are currently facing – have the potential to, if not managed properly, lead to inflation which – through a common, shared perception called “the financial market/reality” – can rob the tokens of their previously assigned value. And that leads to the situation of using wheelbarrows to collect pay cheques and the like.
I think I’ve possibly spent too much time running household budgets to be impressed by economists/financial advisors’ preaching.
It’s not that I have a great inherent distrust of markets. In my day job, as an engineer, I’ve seen the good and bad of public and private enterprise, and advise clients to use market forces – when it is appropriate, and in ways that are appropriate. Which includes ethical. Because karma is also an energy.
As a digression, I’m currently experiencing great problems in my life because of stress caused by a bureaucratic, bloody-minded, penny-pinching approach being taken by a public sector organisation. This approach is costing the community money, and making the projects timelines impossible to meet. On the other hand, I’m aware of times when the private sector does work which will cost the community money (e.g., using higher velocities in pipes, which increases power consumption – such matters typically happen when design & construct approaches to work are badly written).
Both parts of the market have advantages and disadvantages – one matter I am very aware of is that a healthy public sector avoids problems such as those associated with the rampant individualism and greed of the US economy, where, for instance, poverty exit-rates are FAR lower than those of the more socially aware and responsible European market, and where health care is unaffordable for many people. (I have seen people in the US Wiccan community ask for help with financial costs; I wrote to the US ambassador about these problems in a general sense, but was a bit stumped by privacy considerations when the ambassador [or ambassador’s lackey] did the Margaret Thatcher thing of “what are these people’s names?”)
Another part of saying things have advantages and disadvantages is that there are times when they are appropriate, and times when they are not.
In my opinion, the current financial crisis is showing, as the 89-92 recession did with the decade of greed, that there are limits to milking people out of money (my veiled reference to the sub-prime mortgage market, where people were duped into loans they could not afford – and approach I found starting to sneak into Australia in recent years). To put this more nicely, there are possibly limits to situations where capitalism is “good”.
You know what? That is OK. Things can evolve – for instance, democracy nowadays is far better than the free-male-only version the ancient Greeks invented.
On a personal level, I consider everything you do you should be aware of your needs and wants, and your risks. For instance, in undertaking psychic development, is your want really, perhaps, something like fostering friendships? Perhaps your need is spiritual self discipline, rather than adding one or two more healing techniques to your resume? In any case, are you actually applying your personal/spiritual/psychic development to making you a better sentient being, and your life a “better” (whatever that is!) life? I’ve had two major changes of path (away from Christianity, and away from [westernised] Buddhism) because I became fed up with people who failed to apply their beliefs to make themselves better people.
As I wrote: things change and evolve, and those “things” can include spiritual paths.
Are you being genuine in your spiritual beliefs with respect to this financial crisis, or are you writing it off as something afflicting only either the rich or the ignorant? Shame on you if you are, as the effects are being felt by many hard working, honest people who deserve help.
If you are working on the financial crisis, are you ideologically committed to capitalism, or are you open minded, fair and objective?
Life has a way of bringing us lessons we would rather avoid at times. What lessons is this current crisis bringing to you?
Love, light, hugs and blessings
Gnwmythr
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Tags: perceptions, change, life lessons, personal responsibility, personal characteristics,
First published: Saturday 8th November, 2008
Last edited: Saturday 8th November, 2008
Post No. 052 - Who is in YOUR family?
A view that I come across from time to time is to the effect of “Why should I help them? They’re not family!”. In a slightly different form, it is often expressed as “Family is all that matters”.
Such views actually have a useful place – for instance, the comment about the importance of family is often about the only way people can convince greedy bosses to back off and allow them some time to have a life. In my view, however, “I need more time to spend with my friends”, or “I need some time to have a life” should be just as credible as “I need more time with my family”. That it isn’t is a sad reflection on our world.
I know that the experience of love for a family, including “add ons” to that family (e.g., parent’s new partners, fostered/adopted children – ALL of whom are as legitimately part of the family as the original members) has benefits. With respect to spiritual growth, for example, these benefits are that one begins to think of others before oneself, which is a good step along the way towards attaining the spiritual ideal of “universal love/goodwill” that many faiths espouse (albeit, in some cases, a bit nominally). I personally consider attaining a state of universal goodwill/neutrality a key part of spiritual evolution, and I see the progression as typically being something like:
- realisation (as a toddler/young child, usually) that you have a separate identity/consciousness
- self absorbance as this separateness is relished
- self love as one emotionally and/or spiritually matures (which, IF it occurs, may be at any stage between young child and venerably aged)
- love for those about oneself (family and friends – and this I by no means universal: there are families and “friends” who are abusive; this can also be a struggle where such family/friends are “not nice”, or where the love impacts - or seems to impact - on one’s earlier self absorbance/self love, possibly because there is a fear that there is a limit to such love)
- realisation (or stirrings of realisation) that we are all connected, and that the initial realisation of separateness of identity/consciousness may not be quite as clear-cut as it initially seemed
- struggles to develop some universality of love/goodwill (or at least a genuine neutrality), which will be exacerbated by inappropriate/wrong views on the Universe/Deity/the nature of our interconnectedness/basic reasons (“rewards”) for doing this, as well as where other people are “not nice” or where the universality impacts - or seems to impact - on one’s earlier self absorbance/self love/family love/love of friends, possibly because there is a fear that there is a limit to such love.
Also, just to complicate matters, things are not just a simple always moving forward matter. We backslide in the one life, and with some lives interspersed between other more clearly forward moving lives. As an example of that, one of my partners in this life (actually most of them, but I am thinking of one ex- in particular) was someone who I have known in previous lives. We’ve been marrier previously, with both of us swapping male and female genders at times, we’ve been friends, we’ve shared lives including piracy and frontier lifestyles, and we’ve also been “enemies”, in the sense of being on opposite sides of war, where we have been responsible for each other’s death. Our paths differed in the last thousand years or so in a couple of significant ways. Firstly, I am of the opinion that I probably had a life in a Tibetan “monastery” (of sorts) in about the 1200s/1300s, and had a significant reawakening of my spirituality as a result of that. I also learned a great deal about self discipline through a life in the British Navy in the early 1800s (no, I was NOT at Trafalgar, and I was NOT anyone famous in either of these lives). My ex didn’t, so wound up leading a less disciplined, more family oriented lifestyle in this incarnation, whereas I wanted to focus more on my broader family: all humanity (maybe even all sentient life?). How does this illustrate the backsliding? Well, the piracy life was after the Tibetan life. So, despite the long term reawakening and flowering of my spirituality owing to that life, that did NOT mean I was continually thereafter a “spiritual” or “good” person.
(Incidentally, if you want to ask “can I prove any of these lives?”, the answer is “most probably not”. If you’re asking that, the sort of verifiable detail you are after is such that I could probably only provide that if I had been hypnotised. I wasn’t, and cannot be bothered stuffing around with such trivialities for the sake of others’ uncertainties about such matters. I have too much to do with getting on with life and growth to waste time and energy on such. There is evidence that I am satisfied with – such as being “recognised” by a former colleague from my most recent life – but what matters about that is that it matches MY standards on veracity, NOT yours.)
Going back to family, those who fail to understand the inherent abundance of the Universe (I have always liked the definition of Deity, from Stuart Holroyd’s “Briefing for the Landing on Planet Earth”, that “Deity” is to the effect of “a universal intelligence which grows on love”) may feel that it isn’t possible to care deeply about strangers. This may show in statements like:
- “Why help them? I don’t know them!” or “They’re not family”
(which I’ve heard sometimes about people overseas struck by some terrible disaster, sometimes about people who may or may not be “blameless” with respect to their conduct [such as the homeless – and the assessment of blame is in the mind of the beholder, in this case], sometimes about acquaintances who are not family by blood or relationship)
- “What matters most is the support of your family”
(which is a slightly reverse view of the topic, where one is prepared to expect to be loved by others for whom one is related, but not others)
- “How can you really care for them? They’re not blood!”
(heard, for instance, when some people comment about adopting or fostering; such people should (a) read “The Selfish Gene”, by Richard Dawkins (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Selfish_Gene), and (b) think about how this could possibly be different to other people coming is as, for example, new partners)
- “You’re part of this family now”
(whoop-de-frickin’-do; I was always a person in my own right, with my own inherent right to exist – I don’t need someone else’s approval or validation)
I think it is high time such family-only apologists thought seriously about the lessons of exemplary people such as Mohandas K. Gandhi (“Mahatma” is an honorary title), Christ (I’m not a member of the book religions: I don’t see Christ as being any more God than the rest of us already are), Martin Luther King, Bishop Desmond Tutu, and (in his later life) Nelson Mandela. (Mother Theresa has been excluded because of her views on same sex attracted people; I don’t know what Bishop Tutu’s views on homosexuality are, but I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt for now.) We’re all part of the same, big family, on the one small planet. We’re all in this together, so let’s start respecting each other equally, and pull together by AT LEAST not hating or inferring or treating as second rate anyone not in our blood/intimate relationship family.
Gnwmythr
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Tags: arrogance, about me, control, family, growth, interpersonal interactions, judging others, life lessons, personal characteristics,
First published: Saturday 8th November, 2008
Last edited: Saturday 8th November, 2008
Sunday, 28 September 2008
Post No. 051 - Superstitions
Well, you know what? I agree with you.
So there.
I actually do think there is too much blind faith and desire for things to work in too many metaphysically/spiritually inclined people – which, given the sad, unduly sceptical, materialistic state of our world, is understandable (though actually counter productive, as it leads to what does work being swamped in a sea of shoddy details which feed the sceptics). We would be better off maintaining some objectivity, and lots of true scientific enquiry. But that “true scientific enquiry” does not assume things either work or they don’t: there are rules, contraindications, circumstances/people for whom things will work and others for whom it won’t work.
I always tell people, in my crystal workshops, this won’t work for all people. When we cover dowsing with a crystal pendulum, I then talk about theories that this will not work for a couple of hours each day, and that you have to be very precise in your questions (e.g., don’t ask “can you tell me if ...?”, as the crystal may well answer “yes”, meaning it can tell you, which may be WRONGLY interpreted by you to mean the answer to your 2nd question was yes), and check how each combination of you + crystal will indicate yes, no or maybe. The rules for communication can change for each combination.
And that, dear readers (both of you :) ), brings me back to superstitions.
MAYBE the reason there seems to be a kernel of truth in these for some people is that they are true for SOME people. MAYBE those people’s guides know they are inclined towards certain types of beliefs, and so they USE those beliefs to frame their communications. For instance, someone close to me has a superstition that seeing magpies has meanings: one for sorrow, two for joy, three for a girl and four for a boy, five for silvery, six for gold, seven for a story never to be told. That works for her – infallibly (well, the one and two do anyway), but doesn’t for me. However, the superstition that owls are a harbinger of death does work for me (as far as physically seing owls is concerned – that doesn’t apply to psychic visions for me, which is fortunate considering owl is one of my power animals).
Well all is said and done, superstitions are superstitions. They don’t necessarily have a rational basis that can be used universally (but neither do, say, all medicines), but, in this irrational, imperfect world, they may be being used a valid means of communication from those who are busting their guts to try and help us as best they can. Love, light, hugs and blessings
Gnwmythr
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Tags: communication, correspondences, cross-fertilisation (ideas), daily life, divination, interpersonal interactions, inventiveness, judging others,
First published: Sunday 28th September, 2008
Last edited: Sunday 28th September, 2008
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