Subject: Cosmic Consciousness & the Ecstasy of Garbage
Make no mistake about it. Everything affects you.
From the music you listen to, to the person sitting next to you, the words you read, the food you eat, the sounds you hear.
Everything is affecting your experience.
So you listen to music of some famous musician who eventually committed suicide and suddenly you feel depressed and you don't know why.
At one level of consciousness you become aware of the energy of everything around you and begin to choose an environment that supports peace, bliss and love.
At another level of consciousness you welcome everything.
You allow everything to move through you, because there are no longer boundaries between you and everything else.
It is all one.
You experience everything as the same energy, the same consciousness and the very nature of that energy is ecstasy.
That's the state where you are just as happy to live your life next to an overflowing trash can as you would be by a beautiful ocean.
You experience the ecstasy of garbage.
You don't just accept the garbage, you are madly in love with garbage. You experience garbage as bliss.
No fooling!
But that is a very high state and most who experience it have to come down from it and eventually you move away from the garbage.
Everyone makes mistakes and the busier you are, the more mistakes you will make. The only question is “How well and how effectively do you deal with the inevitable ups and downs of life?”
In this newsletter, you learn the difference between a positive and negative world view. You learn how to benefit from your mistakes and how to remain positive in the face of adversity.
Let the Light Shine In
This is achieved through the simple exercise of self-..disclosure. For you to truly understand yourself, or to stop being troubled by things that may have happened in your past, you must be able to disclose yourself to at least one person. You have to be able to get those things off your chest. You must rid yourself of those thoughts and feelings by revealing them to someone who won’t make you feel guilty or ashamed for what has happened.
Using Stumbling Blocks as Stepping Stones
There are two ways to look at the world: the benevolent way or the malevolent way. People with a malevolent or negative worldview take a victim stance, seeing life as a continuous succession of problems and a process of unfairness and oppression. They don’t expect a lot and they don’t get much. When things go wrong, they shrug their shoulders and passively accept that this is the way life is and there isn’t anything they can do to make it better.
On the other hand, people with a benevolent or positive worldview see the world around them as filled with opportunities and possibilities. They believe that everything happens as part of a great process designed to make them successful and happy. They approach their lives, their work, and their relationships with optimism, cheerfulness, and a general attitude of positive expectations. They expect a lot and they are seldom disappointed.
“You Become What You Think About Most of the Time!”
Flex Your Mental Muscles
When you develop the skill of learning from your mistakes, you become the kind of person who welcomes obstacles and setbacks as opportunities to flex your mental muscles and move ahead. You look at problems as rungs on the ladder of success that you grab onto as you pull your way higher.
Two of the most common ways to deal with mistakes are invariably fatal to high achievement. The first common but misguided way to handle a mistake is the failure to accept it when it occurs. According to statistics, 70 percent of all decisions we make will be wrong. That’s an average. This means that some people will fail more than 70 percent of the time, and some people will fail less. It is hard to believe that most of the decisions we make could turn out to be wrong in some way. In fact, if this is the case, how can our society continue to function at all?
Cut Your Losses
The fact is that our society, our families, our companies, and our relationships continue to survive and thrive because intelligent people tend to cut their losses and minimize their mistakes. It is only when people refuse to accept that they have made a bad choice or decision-and prolong the consequences by sticking to that bad choice or decision-that mistakes become extremely expensive and hurtful.
Learn From Your Mistakes
The second common approach that people take with regard to their mistakes, one that hurts innumerable lives and careers, is the failure to use your mistakes to better yourself and to improve the quality of your mind and your thinking.
Learning from your mistakes is an essential skill that enables you to develop the resilience to be a master of change rather than a victim of change. The person who recognizes that he has made a mistake and changes direction the fastest is the one who will win in an age of increasing information, technology and competition.
By remaining fast on your feet, you will be able to out-play and out-position your competition. You will become a creator of circumstances rather than a creature of circumstances.
Action Exercises
Now, here are three steps you can take immediately to put these ideas into action..
First, imagine that your biggest problem or challenge in life has been sent to you at this moment to help you, to teach you something valuable. What could it be?
Second, be willing to cut your losses and walk away if you have made a mistake or a bad choice. Accept that you are not perfect, you can’t be right all the time, and then get on with your life.
Third, learn from every mistake you make. Write down every lesson it contains. Use your mistakes in the present as stepping stones to great success in the future.
Profound Mystic, Yogi, Visionary Humanitarian and Global Leader
I'm generally referred to as a mystic. Well, what's that supposed to mean? If there is something here that you do not know or you are unable to understand, that would become "mysterious" to you. If there is someone here who seems to know and understand things most people do not, that person would become a "mystic".
As a child, one thing that I realized was that I was utterly, absolutely ignorant and everybody around me seemed to know just about everything. I did not know anything at all. So I had to pay enormous attention towards everything. My sense of attention became like this -- if I saw a leaf, I could sit there looking at this leaf, just staring at it for hours. If I sat up in my bed, just staring at the darkness, I could do that for the whole night.
So this attention brought a completely different level of involvement and interaction with just about anything and everything around me, animate and inanimate. But everybody else seemed to know everything and they were going about their life busy and happy while I was staring at every little thing. And they not only knew about what is here, they also knew about other worlds, about heavens, about gods, about everything.
This so intrigued me that I started planting myself outside a major temple in India because I wanted to really see how people would be after having a meeting with God, after having a conversation with God. So I stood there intensely observing every face walking out of the temple. Generally, I heard local gossip. Sometimes in Indian temples, your footwear walks away with someone else and then I would hear people cursing the whole creation and the Creator. I always found people walking out of restaurants had more joyful faces than people walking out of temples. I could not come to terms with this. Then I realized that they had just made up assumptions and belief systems that they were happy with -- either their own or what was handed down to them by somebody else. So I slowly became more and more skeptical about everybody and everything around me, skeptical about social structures, political systems, religious beliefs, even scientific theories because none of them matched with my experience of life.
On a certain day, when I was 25 years of age, I started heading towards Chamundi Hills in Mysore; you must see this place. There is a tradition in Mysore -- if you have something to do, you go to Chamundi Hills; if you have nothing to do, you go to Chamundi Hills; if you fall in love, you go to Chamundi Hills; if you fall out, you go to Chamundi Hills. I had just fallen out and I had nothing to do so I started heading towards Chamundi Hills and I went up and sat on a rock. Till that moment in my life, I always thought, 'This is me and whatever is outside of me is somebody else or something else.' But for the first time, I did not know what was me and what was not me. Suddenly, what was me was just all over the place; the very rock on which I was sitting, the air that I was breathing, the very atmosphere around me, I had just exploded into everything. That sounds like utter insanity. This, I thought, lasted for 10 to 15 minutes but when I came back to my normal consciousness, about four-..and-a-half hours had passed. I was sitting there, fully conscious, eyes open, but time had just flipped in my experience. And for the first time in my adult life, tears were flowing down. I'd always been peaceful and happy, that was not an issue, but here I was drenched in a completely different kind of blissfulness; every cell in my body bursting with ecstasy. When I shook my head and tried to get some logical explanation for what was happening to me, the only thing that my mind could say was, 'Maybe I'm just going off my rocker.'
In my skeptical mind, I was not able to come to terms with what was happening so I started conducting experiments. These experiments are too weird to talk about and the results too fairytale-ish for anybody to believe, but one thing that I arrived at was that existence is not human-centric and all human experience is self-made. I realized the basis of my experience is within me, the very basis of my experience is within me, all that I experience comes from me. I shifted from staring at things to sitting with my eyes closed. This was a dimensional shift in my life. I got so fascinated with this human mechanism, I wouldn't want to open my eyes. For days on end, I just kept my eyes closed, wanting to see everything about "myself". And what I realized was, if I take a piece of bread and put it into this system, this piece of bread becomes my body in a few hours and I begin to experience it as myself. This amazing process, as I became more and more aware of it, I saw that the very source of creation, the very maker of this body, the manufacturer of this body is within. Once I saw this, I realized I could re-wire my brains completely in 24 hours, changing myself beyond social upbringing, family situations, even genetic qualities. I could see I could just completely change everything about myself.
On a certain day, in a field hockey game, I fractured my left ankle and I went and sat down. I was in excruciating pain and had a very severe bout of asthma; this pain and this inability to breathe together, they were quite something. At that moment, it occurred to me that if the maker of this body is inside, why is it that I cannot mend this from inside? I sat down with a certain resolve; if this is true, I must be able to allow it to mend itself, otherwise I must be completely on the wrong track. I sat down with my eyes closed for a little more than an hour. When I came out, my asthma left me, never to come back again, and above all, my fractured leg was perfectly okay in a little more than an hour's time.
This intelligence and this competence within the human system exist in every human being but unfortunately remain untapped. So I went about creating systems that people could make use of and thus evolved technologies for inner wellbeing; methods to engineer your interiority the way you want it. Millions of people are making use of these technologies, enjoying the benefits of them, but the essential part of this is that there is such a high level of intelligence and competence on every millimeter of the body, every point of the body. This is completely untapped by human societies. Maybe your ability to determine what happens in the world is limited, but what happens within you is 100 percent yours.
Most people believe that their experience is molded by the situations in which they exist, but all human experience is 100 percent self-created from within. Today modern science is very much in agreement with this. And having realized this, if all experience is created from within, if the basis of your experience is within you, the seat of your experience is within you, what kind of experience of life would you want to have? For yourself, I'm sure you want utmost pleasantness, whatever you may be doing. What you want for your neighbor may be debatable, but what you want for yourself is utmost pleasantness.
On a certain day, a lady went to sleep. In her sleep, she had a dream. In her dream, she saw a hunk of a man standing there, staring at her and he started coming closer, closer, closer. She could even feel his breath. She trembled - not in fear - and asked, "What will you do to me?" The man said, "Well lady, it's your dream."
Michael Captain of the Lord’s House; Prince of the Heavenly Host
If there was ever an angelic popularity contest, it’s likely that Michael Archangel would win. Michael is beloved by Pagans, Jews, Christians, Muslims, and the Unaffiliated. His name means “Who Is Like the Lord”. Statement or question? You decide.
Michael is head of the Lord’s Army. He crushed the Rebel Angels. Legend has it that if Lucifer could only have persuaded Michael to join him, Heaven would have been overthrown.
Michael is the angel of righteousness—h....e does what is right. He cannot be bribed. He is allegedly among the few angels who know the Ineffable Name of Power.
Michael is invoked for protection from anything that frightens you. If you are worried about the safety of loved ones, Michael may be petitioned on their behalf. He accepts petitions from one person on behalf of another. He is the archangel of justice and maybe invoked to provide justice for crimes committed against you. He is the special protector of victims of rape and maybe invoked for protection against sexual abuse.
An old verbal charm invokes Michael’s vigilant protection:
Michael to the right of me, Michael to the left of me, Michael above me, Michael below me, Michael all around me, Michael, with your flaming sword, Of cobalt blue, please protect me
This charm’s power is enhanced by simultaneously visualizing being surrounded by cobalt blue flames emanating from Michael’s sword. Further appeals maybe added at the end of the charm. For an example: Michael, please protect my cat, my dog, my true love and so forth. Be as specific as possible. Name and visualize your desire.
Michael has dominion over fire magic and candle spells. He is the angel of fire safety, also invoked for safety at sea. He is the patron of those suffering from sea sickness or motion sickness. Moroccan folklore suggests that precipitation (rain, snow, hail) falls from a celestial reservoir or sea. Michael presides over this sea. Precipitation only occurs according to his command.
Michael serves as a pyschopomp, escorting dead souls to the next realm and guarding them on their journey. Russian folklore envisions him as a ferryman bringing good souls toward Paradise’s radiant light. Michael guards the gates of Paradise. At the Final Judgment, he will weigh the souls of the dead.
Michael is the Angel of Insomnia, which he both heals and causes. According to Jewish legends, the reason the King Ahasueros couldn’t sleep in the Queen Esther story is because the Creator sent Michael to afflict him with sleeplessness.
Michael makes frequent public appearances -- Apparitions of Michael have been recorded in Mexico, Italy, and France. Most recently in 1995 and 1996. Egyptian Christians and Muslims witnessed numerous apparitions of Michael in the Church of Saint Michael in the village of Kafr Yusuf Samri. He appeared in various forms both with and without wings. Miracles recorded include exorcisms, healings, and multiplication of oil.
Favored People Theoretically, Michael as humanity’s defender is everyone’s guardian, but he is also specifically patron of firefighters, warriors, paratroopers, ambulance drivers, artists, mariners, and law enforcement officers. Judaism, Coptic Christianity, and Roman Catholicism all claim him as special patron. He also favors professionals who utilize scales, including chemists, pharmacists, bakers, and grocers, possibly weight watchers.
Manifestation Michael takes many forms from classical winged angel to a being of brilliant, blinding light to a head of garlic. Garlic contains his essence and is thus more than just a protective amulet; it is an actual manifestation of Michael.
Iconography Michael is frequently portrayed as a winged Roman solider. He is commonly portrayed with a dragon; this is now interpreted as representing his victory over Lucifer, but this image may hark back to the days when Michael was worshipped as a deity in the Babylonia and Persia. He may have once have ridden that dragon.
Attributes Shield, sword, and scales. Planet Sun and Mercury Plant Angelica archangelica, garlic Elements Fire, water
Direction Various directions are attributed to him, usually south or east; the Kabbalah places Michael on the right side (Gabriel is on the left).
Colors Red, silver, and cobalt blue Dates September 29th, the feast of Michaelmas. Coptic tradition recommends the 12th of each month for requesting protection and help from Michael.
Sacred Sites Michael is the patron saint of France. Mont-....Saint-Michel in Normandy was dedicated to Michael in 708 CE after the archangel appeared to Aubert, Bishop of Avranches, in a series of dreams, ordering him to transform it into a shrine dedicated to him. Pilgrimage to Mont-....Saint-Michel allegedly guarantees smooth passages to the next life. The waters have demonstrated some of the strongest tides on Earth. Mont-....Saint-Michel bears a mystical reputation, sometimes associated with the Grail. It maybe part of an aligned chain of sacred standing stones including Delos, Delphi, and Mount Carmel.
Offerings Frankincense, myrrh, angelica, garlic. In Sicily, he is given sugar and sweet liqueurs.
Subject: Seeing The Buddha In All: The Practice Of Pure Perception
You are not the only unawakened Buddha or amnesiac saint on the block. Seeing others as Buddhas is taught in Vajrayana practices as the cultivation of pure perception or sacred outlook. Pure perception is about inner vision.
As an example, all you pet lovers might want to think about a dog that you know. The mailman may see that dog as an unholy terror; an allergic relative may see it as a dirty dust ball; a child may see it as a best friend; its owner may see it as an angelic blessing and an oasis of unconditional loyalty and win/win mutuality in his life.
The Dharma teaches us that all beings have Buddha-nature, including that dog. Can you look at that dog and perceive its Buddha-nature? Can you look in the eyes of someone you love and see Buddha-nature? Can you look at someone you fear or someone who has been unkind to you and see Buddha-nature?
The question is how far can any of us extend ourselves toward including one and all in our unconditional loving hearts? Can we love and respect even those whose actions or personalities we don't happen to like? How far can we genuinely extend ourselves to include all in our wishes, thoughts, prayers, and hearts? Can we forgive others and forgive ourselves too? Seeing the Buddha in all is a challenge, but it's also a mirror for clearly seeing into your own heart and soul. This sacred outlook and penetrating spiritual gaze could prove extraordinarily.... revealing.
-- From "Awakening The Buddha Within" by Lama Surya Das
An energy field surrounds everything. Energy pulses out from objects, interacting with and absorbing other energies. A person’s energy field, commonly called an aura, is generated inside the body and extends outward to surround it. Understanding the electrical and magnetic nature of energy is important to understanding healing.
The energy field you generate is created by your beliefs and thoughts. Like a radio tower, you send out concentric pulses of energy that broaden and weaken as they move farther away. An electromagnetic.. charge exists immediately around your body. This magnetism impacts all it comes in contact with and, by extension, influences the entire universe. Like a strong magnet, your field of energy draws other energies to it and absorbs the power of them. The energies you attract and the ways they are absorbed are influenced by your belief systems. Your beliefs filter and alter other energies as they enter your power source and, in turn, become part of the energy that emanates from you.
This magnetic power draws to you the situations, people, and events that will reinforce whatever it is you believe. If you believe you are a victim, that people constantly exploit you and that you are unlovable, your electromagnetic.. field will be charged with those beliefs and will draw to you circumstances that reinforce this. If you believe you are a divine being, that all doors of opportunity are open to you, that you are loved by yourself and others, and that good things always come your way, then your magnetic energy will draw to you positive life conditions, which reinforce your positive energy.
Take a moment to think about what you really believe and notice what you are drawing into your life. What do you believe about yourself, about God, about money, about your job, about your family, about your friends, and about life in general? Review your beliefs to understand which energies you attract. If you impart negative thoughts to your energy field, you will attract events and people that manifest negative beliefs. Negative energy begets negative experience, which reinforces negative beliefs. Conversely, if you radiate positive beliefs and thoughts, you will draw the situations to you that confirm your beliefs and reinforce your positive life experience.
The advantage of positive thoughts is that they are electrically charged at a higher frequency than negative thoughts. They also extend out farther and with greater strength into the universe. They leave you with a feeling of expansiveness, growth, and lightness. Negative thoughts are dense and heavy, whereas positive thoughts are light and high in vibration. Observe people’s body posture and you can get a sense of how these frequencies affect them physically. People who are self-confident usually hold themselves tall and upright, as though they could lift right off the ground. Their breathing is full and expands the lungs, chest, and abdomen. People with heavy and dense negative energy look as though they are carrying a heavy backpack at all times. Their shoulders are often rounded, their head tilts down, and their breathing is shallow as if there just is not any room for breath in their lungs. They often feel tightness and stress in the upper back and shoulders. The density of negative energy causes the body to collapse inwardly. Healing is the art and science of managing not only these energy fields, but also their root cause.
It is possible to feel the different nature of energies in another person. Try this experiment: Have the person think intense negative thoughts of self-loathing and poor self-worth. Place your hands above their head and try to feel the energy radiating out. You will have the impression of a collapsing, dense aura. Next, help the same person think strong positive thoughts of their importance and self-worth. You can literally feel the difference in the energy as it expands outward with lightness and happiness. When working with someone in this activity, remember to finish on the positive note.
Energy changes with intention, instantaneously.. and powerfully. Changing your electromagnetic.. field of energy is not difficult, nor does it take years of study or practice. It is immediate. You can understand this by simply changing your thoughts and noticing the instant shift in the energy within and around you. Through practice, you can better manage, moment to moment, the energy that surrounds you. Your work in self-discovery, digging deeply into your belief system and scrutinizing your core beliefs, will allow you to permanently intensify the positive energy you radiate and attract. You can project energies that contribute meaningfully to a better universe and a better life for all people.
All objects possess an energy field and radiate and attract energy. Energy can transfer and be shared between objects, creating a bond or magnetism. This energy exchange explains the phenomenon of dowsing rods, which have been used for thousands of years to locate sources of water. They are still used today by power companies, which employ them to locate water mains. This shared transfer and bonding of energy is also what psychics use to find missing objects or people. In the case of a missing person, an article of clothing or jewelry provides an energy source, which connects to the missing person and allows the psychic to determine location. I have done many readings for people by holding a piece of their jewelry and intuitively reading their energy. I have received amazing information about their current condition, past experiences, health, and emotional problems.
Invisible energy is powering your visible experiences and you can control it.
