Be The Change: Are you a part of the problem or the solution?

I’m no fan of pie-in-the-sky dreaming.

Of reductionist thought that answers the real problems of real people in the real world with deeper truth platitudes that end discussion and leave people foundering, sullen and silently fuming as their issues are relegated to meaninglessness in the face of the absolute. This is not to say that being aware of the absolute truth of reality is problematic. Rather, it is to say that confronting the limited and material truths of our reality with the Absolute is not a solution, but is instead a communicative, verbal and vibratory weapon often designed to overwhelm less eternal truths.

An example of this is saying that race does not matter because we are all human. Most people do believe this is true. But bringing this truth up in a conversation about the Israeli/Palestinian problem, or the issue of black incarceration in the Prison Industrial Complex in the United States does not forward the discussion, nor does it offer any practical solutions that can be implemented in the resolution of the problem.

Solutions are what are needed. Heart-centered solutions that speak to the necessity of all people to have their sovereign rights as incarnate souls respected. This is  a basic human right of existence that cannot be gainsayed by any political ideology, philosophical treaties or religious creed.

The good news is that hearts and minds are opening daily. That consciousness is spreading like wildfire across the world as the inter connectivity provided by the internet becomes the ubiquitous mode of communication for the majority of the world’s citizens. Seeking solutions and salvation beyond the self in groups and institutions must be accompanied by a search for solutions within each of us for our own problems and issues. There can be no real movement for peace and unity when we do not each individually possess those qualities within ourselves.

A slight qualification of the above statement is in order: there can be such movements and have been and probably will be, but those movements will be corrupted at their heart and soul if those who comprise the movement are corrupted in their hearts and souls. The body of membership of any organization is the sum of that membership, inculcating their dreams and desires, which then become the mission and purpose of the group. No matter what their stated principles are, the words and actions of the group will reflect the collective will of their membership, manifesting even their unconscious dreams and desires, masked beneath an rhetorical facade that usually only pays lip service to the ideology publically espoused.

This is why politicians are always caught with their pants down and their bank accounts open, their integrity compromised. This is why corporate raiders and profiteers are concerned primarily with the bottom line, lining their pockets with obscene bonuses and wondering why anybody would complain. This is why preachers and priests do terrible things to children and the emotionally compromised. This is why we hate ourselves, secretly in our inner hearts and souls, desperately seeking salavation outside of ourselves because to look within and actually do something about what we find there is too painful to work with directly.

It’s all well and good to speak words of wisdom or quote the spiritual and philosophical masters and enlightened ones when that sharing is done in the spirit of giving and not in the spirit of taking. In this sense, taking praise from others, likes from the multitude, the verbal praise of having something that others lack, of being able to see into the heart of  situations and to share what is seen there in an empathic and seemingly loving manner is a gift of the spirit and can be easily recognized for its resonance factor and embodiment of higher energetic frequencies. Conversely, doing such in the context of a personal battle of wills or in the making of points that emphasize an individual and egoistic attachment to self-gratification through the adulation of the hoi polloi serve to densify and further stratify personality in a hierarchical and energetically vampiric structure of vanity and egoism. Differentiating between these two types of expression is a stark but necessary maneuver for those who seek to recognize the real from the facade. Platitudes and truisms used as weapons in order to win an argument or in response to a perceived slight on the part of others are platitudes and truisms used in vain.

They are indicative of BEingness that is self-centered and ego-centric. Granted, that consciousness may be and probably is on the road of spiritual and philosophical enlightenment, but in that particular instance they have been waylaid by the intellect of ego and the densification of anger, affront or judgement, which renders their judgement faulty. This is a condition of creation and material incarnation and there is no fault in living in the real and being cognizant of the process of gradual evolution, which is indeed a process, meaning, it does not happen instantaneously for most people. It takes a while to grow and learn through experience how to truly become wise instead of just appearing so.

The solutions to all of the world’s problems are already known. The way to get there has already been laid out. The world’s problems are the same as each of our individual problems, just magnified and fractalized at a larger scale of macrocosmic occurrence. It is in the application of this knowledge to ourselves that we fail to apply the solutions that the world needs. And it will only be when we begin as a collective to recognize our individual failings and the interconnectivity of all consciousness that we will understand that by helping ourselves we are indeed helping the world.

The change begins with each of us. It has already begun and is well in progress. Are you a part of the solutions? Or a part of the problem?

Make a difference. Beyond the platitudes and quotes, we must indeed be the change we want to see in the world. Words must lead to actions in order for the shift to be actualized and manifest for us and our children and our children’s children to enjoy a world based upon a very different paradigm than the one that is failing around us in this very moment.

Understanding Consciousness: Part II

How does Belief affect Consciousness?

We are biologically programmed to believe. To know. Every thought results in electromagnetic conduits connecting and disconnecting, synapses forming pathways between neurons, forging the personality through experience and intent. The mind becomes whatever we think as our bodies become whatever we eat.

Convoluting the brain in this manner is normative. Even in rejecting belief we are forming a belief. Patterning the brain and its neural structures a certain way as opposed to another.

When we literally change our minds we change our brains physically. It is the way our bodies are set up to host consciousness. Part and parcel of the program. To not believe is a contradiction in terms. And yet, the paradox is that moving beyond belief and knowledge is the path. To change the mind, to change the biology to become perfectly clear is to change the state of consciousness. The correlation lies in the actual physiological shifts that occur in the body when modalities designed to clear the mind are implemented and integrated into a life, becoming the primary mode of expression. The new field of quantum biology explores the unity of mind and body and the physiology of consciousness.

While it is often entertaining and personally gratifying to obtain knowledge and hold beliefs there comes a point when holding on to the ephemeral, the constantly shifting, must give way to the search for inner peace. Returning to the paradox I mentioned above, knowledge flows easily and beliefs no longer hold the power to physically mold the mind once a state of mental equilibrium is reached. Of course many here are familiar with the practices concerned with achieving this state of being.

The important correlation here is the integration of body and mind. Leading to the understanding that this is all more than mere thoughts, word and actions in the colloquial sense of understanding those terms.

There is much more. The entanglement of minds that form institutions, attitudes, mores and norms, our interrelation to and entanglement with the biosphere. The speed with which our bodies change at the cellular level, the interaction of breath with the air and the environment, the passage of germs and viruses, the decomposition of biological matter and reintegration with the world corpus are all examples of the integration of individual and mass humanity with the Earth. The only separation inherent in our existence is the separation we create within our minds. The holistic nature of our entwined unity of consciousness and biology is no mere idea. It is the fundamental substrate of our very existence. Since that is so, beliefs cannot be subtracted from the corpus of cognition that we engage in and co-create every moment of every day.

Beliefs are an expression of consciousness, and the wide variety of beliefs speaks to the divergence of experience for the human family. Different sub-groups of the family hold differing beliefs, but the ability of all humans to access those cultural beliefs is a pale shadow of each individual’s ability to access the core experience of consciousness, which underlies belief and culturally-specific information. Understanding and relegating these beliefs to a supporting role and distancing them from the knowledge of reality that powers our experience of materiality enhances the connection with the deeper streams of material creation and the core aspects of the human biological interface with the world.

Understanding Consciousness Series

Part I

Part II

Understanding Consciousness: Part 1

Why and How We are Connected with All That Is

What is consciousness? From the freedictionary.com:

con·scious·ness  (knshs-ns)

n.

1. The state or condition of being conscious.

2. A sense of one’s personal or collective identity, including the attitudes, beliefs, and sensitivities held by or considered characteristic of an individual or group: Love of freedom runs deep in the national consciousness.

3.

a. Special awareness or sensitivity: class consciousness; race consciousness.

b. Alertness to or concern for a particular issue or situation: a movement aimed at raising the general public’s consciousness of social injustice.

4. In psychoanalysis, the conscious.

Thoughts are energetic emanations. Electromagnetic and expansive in nature, thought-forms as processed through the biological conduits of neurons and synapsesare the physical forms of creative communication. They can be measured and quantified. The brain’s biological mechanisms, from the amygdala to the thalamus to the pre-frontal cortex, are the structures by which it is wired to process thoughts and create emotions which provide a chemical momentum that powers not only the body but the non-physical energetic coalescence of presence and intent as well.

Humans are multidimensional entities. Consciousness is eternal, infinite and integrally connected to all that is. Quantum experiments have proven the validity of entanglement, which states that all matter in the universe and beyond is interconnected. The double-slit experiment proved that consciousness is an integral part of experience, that the observer cannot be separated from the observed. The existence of multiple dimensions of consciousness is now the general understanding of the nature of creation. All of these facets of scientific discovery are connected and provide a holistic understanding of reality that transcends ideas of a mechanical, objective universe and replaces them with an understanding of a universe, a multiverse, of synthesis, holism and oneness.

In such a creation, consciousness is the binding glue that connects the disparate levels. Humans contain the spark of divinity that connects them not only with all other humans but with animals, insects and plants too. The consciousness inherent in all life also is now beyond dispute, as the intelligence of animals and plants grows more and more undeniable. The ability to think, to reason, to love, to recognize danger and to communicate with each other with a range of emotivity previously relegated to humans alone have all been witnessed and documented as occurring in both the animal and plant kingdoms.  Canines and birds, crystals and fungi, flowers and whales, grasses and machines, viruses and germs all display aspects of consciousness. Humanity is far from alone in possessing the seeds of the divine, it is inherent in all matter, is a fundamental make-up of all of material creation, from the most inanimate to the most animate.

Beyond the material world, into the inter-dimensional darkness of the unknown, consciousness connects our 3rd-dimensional reality with other planes of existence as well. In the realm of psychology, the existence of a collective unconscious has been explored and confirmed, humans share symbols and archetypes across the diverse field of biological difference, no matter what part of the globe any individual or group might be from. This holistic field of shared consciousness can be broken down into cultural groupings, as those who share societal mores form smaller collectivities, still connected to the whole, but sharing individuated markers that make them distinct from the larger groups, to the extent that an individual is ensconced within a family collective that nests within a local collective that is also nested within a regional collective that exists within a national collective which is itself a part of a racial collective.

Understanding that consciousness is not unique to humanity opens the doors to deeper knowledge, prepares the mind for grasping the truths of existence that guide cause and effect upon their fateful courses for all of manifest creation. Communicating lovingly with pets and plants, screaming at breaking or broken machines, are ways of transmitting specific types of energy between different forms of consciousness. The types of energy that we communicate through our thoughts, words and actions determines the nature of our interaction with other forms of consciousness. When it comes to communicating to sensate creation, other denizens of the material plane of existence, emotions flavor our very essence, adding energetic impetus to the force of our thoughts, words and actions. Pets know when we are angry or sad, inanimate objects tend to perform or break coincident to our emotional state.

In the realm of experience, cause and effect also seem to be respondent to emotional states, as internal harmonic resonance often leads to positive life events and outcomes, while internal disharmonic resonance leads to the opposite. How and what a person thinks determines the trajectory of potential outcomes along their life-path. In the daily interactions of the awakened consciousness manifest, individuals embark upon vibrant and responsive patterns of thought and behavior, the holistic nature of their cognitive processes emanating outwards and affecting the world around them in all aspects. In the daily interactions of slumberous consciousness manifest, individuals embark upon repetitious patterns of thought and behavior, the fractured nature of their cognitive processes emanating outwards and affecting the world around them in all aspects. Alert and active participation with life is thusly the modus operandi of all those who have direct control over their thought-processes, words and actions. Sleepwalking through life is thusly the modus operandi of all those with no direct control over their thought-processes, words and actions.

Engaging consciousness actively can only occur if an individual understands the nature of reality. Coming to terms with the power inherent in full intentionality and living consciously awakens the inherent capacity of all humans to control the nature and content of their own minds, which in turn affects the people, the animals, the plants, the non-animate objects and extra-physical realities within which they exist. All denizens of materiality, the created world, must undergo a period of learning during their phase of existential interaction with the rest of creation, the final stage of which must be the harmonic and stable interrelation with all other forms of manifest reality. Moving past stages of fractious and unstable thought processes leading to fractious and unstable emotions, which then result in the vocalization and actualization through actions of such, is the goal of consciousness and the natural evolution of individuals and groups through adolescent stages of interaction to a more mature realization and manifestation.

Understanding Consciousness Series

Part I

Part II

 

Space Dust, the MSM and Spaced-Out Days

It’s a shame that the mainstream media (MSM) are not putting the pieces of the puzzle together for those who only get their news from the Television. Sure, they tell us about one super-storm. A sink hole filled with methane and other gases or an earthquake, if these issues are large enough to affect those in their primary viewership region.

What they don’t talk about are the new changes in the upper atmosphere and oceanic circulation that will be long-lasting. They don’t talk about the increasing earthquakes both around the pacific rim and on old, dormant faults, as well as the centers of crustal plates where there have been few historical quakes, located on micro-faults. They don’t talk about Sol-system (our solar system) moving into a new part of the galaxy with increased space-dust, feeding our sun, making it grow hotter, whiter.

Global warming on other planets in our solar system. But we are experiencing all of this all around the world. The experience cannot be hidden. Just not discussed together in the MSM as indicative of a larger issue.

Taken alongside the shift in consciousness currently in progress – which is directly caused by the electromagnetic and cosmic energy increase related to these extra-planetary events – resulting in the waves of unrest and change sweeping the world the way we experience these changes day to day seems so normal. We walk around in a spaced-out daze too often, in a state of cognitive dissonance as what we know conflicts with that which we don’t. Our experiences reflect the inherent confusion caused by these changes in very specific ways:

1. Emotional turmoil
2. Physical symptoms
3. Sleep problems
4. Increased perception
5. Life turned upside-down

The Ancients used to say, As Above, So Below. Our lives are referential of Everything Else. What is going on within each of us, is also going on without. There is only a problem when we don’t know what is going on within us. Then we only have a vague idea about what is going on outside of us. We may visit Doctors who examine our symptoms and prescribe medications to quell them. We may listen to Pundits who bloviate about the topics of the day ad infinitum in order to quiet our curiosity.

We undergo our quiet storms in quiet desperation not realizing that many people across the world are experiencing similar turmoil. We watch the news and shake our heads, not used to drawing the connection between what is going on in the Mid-east and what is going on at our jobs. Our increased irritability and Japan and China fighting over some small islands. The argument you had with your child’s teacher and the argument about education and charter schools.

Our personal energetic fields are inter-connected and our hearts send out magnetic vibrations at the resonance of its emotional state, affecting others. Individuals affect groups, groups affect communities, communities affect nations. The famous example of a butterfly in the Amazon flapping its wings and affecting the weather in New York City seems fanciful but is the same qualitatively as one person in the right position trying to make a change causing a war to erupt.

We are all in the “right” position. Each one of our lives has meaning. Everything we do is important, unto the smallest, most mundane events of the daily grind. Every choice, every decision leads to a course of action that furthers our destinies in the direction of our total and perfect free will expression. Consider our personal limitations, either by birth or circumstance, to mirror the limitations we see in the world around us. The world, as we are, is subject to a certain set of pre-conditions. The world, as we are, is evolving past those pre-conditions in order to manifest a new state of Being. The world, as we are, is changing.

What we individually perceive “out there” in the world around us is really an image we create based upon the limitations of our biology projected on the screen of our minds. We live our lives in our minds, the thoughts we think are the reality that we create.  Our brains create connections between different kinds of information to come to conclusions about the world and we live those conclusions through our decisions. If we are not exposed to as much information as we have access to, then our en-coding of reality is potentially less complete than we need it to be in order to interpret the world as correctly as possible.

The MSM doesn’t help in this regard. Therefore, it is incumbent upon each of us to inform ourselves above and beyond the means readily available to those who are satisfied with the entertainment industry gossip, political maneuvering, reality-based inanity and war-mongering.  There is too much going on to be consciously unconscious. To choose ignorance rather than knowledge.

There may come a time when the knowledge you find, where the connections you make beyond what has been presented to you in the MSM, may be important.  Go beyond what you currently know. Seek information beyond the mainstream.  Seek the truth behind the headlines. Find yourself in others.

Consciousness seeks itself both within and without. Find yourself, and in so doing, you will find the world.

Directed Consciousness: The resonation of material expression

Right now, everything is fine. Peace pulsates at the center. The radiance of calm and well-being exudes an aura of golden stillness.

This is not so because life is perfect. It is not because things are either good or bad. The reason has nothing to do with the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, the trials and tribulations of life. The reason has to do only with the fact that living in the Now creates a mental and spiritual space of presence and awareness. It is the total concentration of attention on the Present. It is the living consciousness of complete awareness.

This is not to say that engaging memory or considerations of the future do not occur. Of course they must, as the processes of living require them in order to navigate life and the world. As an example of directed consciousness, the recapitulation process is a mandatory practice in the resolution of a lifetime. This is also not to say that the emotions are stilled immediately, as they are connected to memory and considerations of the future and often arise spontaneously as the mental imagery and habitual sub-vocal discursiveness engage patterns of chemical release in the form of neuro-peptides cascading from the hypothalamus into the cells of the body, resulting in the bodily expression of mental stimuli. But as the habit of living in the Now evolves and deepens, the neural network begins to reflect the mental changes and the synaptic connection between axons and dendrites that form the network associations we call personality and the memory-based, experiential triggers and self-regulating emotional patterns, resulting in a qualitative rarification process that streamlines the physical structure of the mind in response to the new pattern of the thought processes.

The personal experience of this phenomenon may seem curious and improbable when compared to the typical pattern of emotional addiction and mental chatter that typifies the normative lived experience. But it is the natural evolution of directed consciousness and steady insistence upon mental and emotional control. The ability to direct consciousness and regulate attention is concentration. Everyone does it to a certain extent. Through the practice of physical and mental tasks that develop concentration mind control is facilitated. Art, music, sports and academics all require the development of the concentrative faculties in order to excel in these practices. Since most people have participated in any one of these exercises the states of presence and awareness that often accompany their successful and skilled expression may be somewhat familiar. The reality of living in a constant state of presence and awareness is the reality of living in the Zone.

No matter the state of mind, emotion or body, every moment is perfect. Sometimes it takes a conscious effort to realize this. Ceasing the constant mental chatter to access the infinite space of presence and awareness that underlies all and looking at situations and the world through eyes bright with the epiphanic wonder of directed consciousness reminds the limited personality construct that our default perceptive modalities are only a pale rendition of what is possible.

In the Now regrets fall away into oblivion, as do worries and fears. It becomes readily apparent that such are the illusions of imaginative dwelling, fed by the emotional maelstrom that becomes the personality construct’s default mind-state due to the habitual avoidance of the present moment. Societal forces are in large part responsible for the individual’s preoccupation with the external reality to the detriment of the internal reality. Societal norms and pressure from kinship and peer groups enforce conformity and adherence to patterns of behavior deviating only minimally from standard medians of expressive measurement.

The Voice from Nowhere

The pleasures of a life are many and fleeting but are as nothing compared to the ecstasy of life. The sublime experiences of the spirit are able to lift one from the midst of the daily grind, eliciting wonder and joy, giving a higher context to the purpose of living consciously and in search of the higher aspects of self versus the gratification of the lower. The juxtaposition of the physical and the spiritual is the cauldron of happiness and sadness we traverse through our experiences, the fixation of our attention and perspective alternating between the higher and the lower aspects of our lives. Navigating the Path between the two extremes requires discipline and dedication, mind control and emotional stability.

Life is both sweet and sour and it is designed to be that way. The Earth experience is not a garden of peace nor is it a war planet. It is both and neither, it is something more and something less. The more is the sum of its parts, the objective manifestation of all potentiality within a holographic material matrix of sensual inundation and psycho-spiritual bombardment that satiates the multidimensional requirements of evolving souls. The less is its relative and subjective nature, its tendency to overwhelm the senses and the mind, resulting in crass debauchery and physical enjoyment to the detriment of the higher senses.

Once you have experienced Oneness, the Godhead/Trinity, Unity, Source, directly and unequivocally, you are forever connected to it from that moment on. It lies behind every thought, it informs every relative truth, it denies all separation. It is the futility of living false lives, of telling lies, of being greedy, of serving the needs of self over others. It is pressing the internal button to turn on the omniversal multimedia presentation called Creation, to connect to it consciously, with the intent and purpose of complying with its directives, which represent the laws of energy conservation and movement at all levels of being. In all actuality, we are never disconnected from it – as it is our Home – but the inculcation of an egoistic personality complex and the mental structures of time and space navigation combine to obscure the deeper currents of mind, where the still and placid immensity of All That Is flow unendingly, ever available to those willing to let go and let God.

The pleasures of life lived for the senses are a mere distraction from the deeper pleasures of spiritual awakening. Going beyond pleasure, beyond happiness, beyond the need for any sort of material gratification or emotional intoxication is the reward of the spiritual quest. Food, sex, violence and all variations and associated modalities satiate the sensual, those whose highest aspirations are material gratification and that is as it should be, as life takes all types and we all co-exist at different levels of understanding and experience. But for those traversing these dales of lustful travails they pale quickly, the call ever heard to seek higher, go deeper, expand vision and experience wider. The quiet whisper of Truth promising something more, something amazing, something lasting, something real. And yet, paradoxically, it is the moderate experience of both sides that reveals the true meaning of life.

Complying with the directives of Creation is following the voice from nowhere, the one that speaks without sound. Learning to still the mind and cultivate the quietude of inner peace. Existing in the Now when necessary, recognizing the Crossroads moments and embodying purest Self in response, thereby fulfilling destiny and the highest potentiality of each and ever moment.

As humans on the journey of self-discovery it is necessary for us to be gentle with ourselves along the path. We will fail. We will backslide, meander, digress for a time, it is the nature of consciousness co-opted to alternate between sleeping and awakening for a time. But there will come another time when you will suddenly realize that you are awake more than you are asleep, that you are conscious of your path and purpose and you are actively manifesting the actions necessary to embody your truest expression of Self as only you can.

But to get to this space of Being one has first to begin the journey.

The gratifying reality of real spiritual advancement is that as you initiate your conscious and directed journey to realization you become aware of the existence of certain markers and signposts along the way. There are traditions that inform the seeker about roadblocks ahead or pratfalls to be traversed. Holy books filled with the wisdom of the ages and oral traditions cached with the truth of eternity. Continued immersion within spiritual themes contributes to control of the mind as contemplative practices such as meditation and prayer rarefy the mental space, making it a fitting abode for the Divine. As the mind purifies, the thoughts purify, as the thoughts purify so do the words and, as a result, the actions.

Jesus can get you there, as can Buddha, as can Muhammad, as can Eckhart as can Blavatsky as can so many others. The understanding that surpasses sectarian subjectivity and cultural relativity is the realization that all speak of the same underlying reality by way of differing perspectives. We each take on the perspectives that are comfortable to us. All who follow the path sincerely and with dedication will arrive at the same goal eventually. The path is an inner one and the religious traditions all possess the keys that will unlock the gate. Choosing to unlock the gate is choosing to integrate the higher and lower natures and to accept life as it comes, forgoing the dependency upon the physical nature to solve our problems and determine our goals in life. Getting past impatience and anger, jealousy and greed. Cultivating patience and tolerance, compassion and altruism. Becoming a complete human being, squaring the circle and enlightening the consciousness.

Making a Change: The personal choice to combat ignorance

War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength. ~George Orwell

There is no expiration date for ignorance. As the expression of a manifest desire not to know, ignorance stands as one of the most confounding illnesses that the Awakened have to deal with during this  time of intense energetic shifting and the manifestation of a new world-wide paradigm.

Ignorance is expressed at the individual level and at the collective level. Ignorance is a part of many personal choices in how to live a life. Whether to become apprised of a certain body of knowledge, let’s say, politics. Or, economics. Or even culture. Stubbornly refusing to learn about both sides of any political argument or how money is created or even how to get along with a neighbor of a different religion.

Ingrained belief systems are often to blame. Being raised in environments where diversity is low or not growing up within an environment where life-long learning is emphasized. Sometimes, ignorance is an expression of a perception of superiority. The belief that one’s own understanding and perception of the world is so right that everyone else’s must be wrong and, therefore, unworthy of the attempt at understanding.

Ignorance is also unavoidable. It is inevitable that every single person is ignorant about something, since it is not possible to know everything about everything. Since some amount of ignorance is unavoidable, the state of humility is an excellent space from which to relate to the world. Understanding that our ability to be apprised of all of the variables that comprise a situation is limited, so remaining open to new knowledge is the paramount perspective from which to view and interact with the world.

Being open to new information allows the brain to function at a higher capacity. The neural net can build new synapses, connecting old information to new, creating more complex networks that allow the individual to function beyond the abilities of those who rely upon old, static information and knowledge. Being open to new experiences allows an individual to grow in ways beyond their ability to predict or even to understand. While it is true that it is impossible to hide from life or to cover one’s head in sand and allow the winds of change to blow over with no personal effects, standing straight up and staring change in the eye is a much more preferable way to deal with the world and take charge of your perception of it.

Too many people are living under someone else’s ideas about what the world is, what it is about and why we are all here. Too many people don’t go out and find out for themselves, instead they rely upon the perceptions and opinions of others, which is fine, to an extent. If those opinions and perceptions are relied upon to the detriment of one’s individual initiative and if those opinions and perceptions form the basis of decision-making, becoming dependent upon another’s perspectives without being fully apprised of their intentions or the perspective in opposition to the one in question can represent the heights of ignorance and lead to dangerous and unwanted consequences.

Making the decision to become personally responsible for our own understanding of the world is making the decision to become a sovereign soul. Making the effort to understand both sides of any political argument, how the world in which we live works and why people different from you believe the way they do is making the decision to become an informed individual who is then qualified to make wise decisions in relation to the world around them. Learning how to navigate the informational highways in all of their personal and impersonal varieties contributes to the educational process as all of the institutional traps and dead-ends also become apparent for what they are.

The world is what it is, our perceptions of it do not necessarily match what’s really going on out there. The extent to which our understanding is limited is the extent to which we have relied upon external input or no input at all in navigating our lives. Living life on auto-pilot only works for a short time. If you encounter a bump or an air-pocket along the way it quickly becomes clear that course-correction is in order. To then return to auto-pilot is the height of ignorance. Unfortunately, that is what most people do. Follow the courses of action laid out by others, responding to emergencies and then returning to the previously unworkable course of action, washing, rinsing and then repeating, again and again and then wondering why life didn’t turn out the way you wanted it.

Take the chance to make a change. Become responsible for your perception of the world by finding things out for yourself instead of relying on others opinions. Go see for yourself. Step out of your comfort zone. Go talk to a Republican or Democrat, see why they think the way they do. Watch a movie that informs you about Modern Money Mechanics. Go talk to the Muslim or Jew or African-American down the street.

Combat ignorance with curiosity and reap the benefits of participating in your world instead of being carried along by it.

Insane Thoughts and Crazy Talk: Who are you, really?

There seems to be a lot of negativity going around in the last few days. Wherever I turn, wherever I look someone is ready to start a fight and someone else is there too, ready to end it.

Perhaps it is mercury retrograde right now, but communications are at a standstill. People are standing on virtual street-corners screaming out their truths and not caring who is listening or responding back. The babble is continuous and it is rising as space weather increases and the sun pops off flare after flare, as things go downhill even further in the Middle East and elsewhere in the world, as politics in the USA heat up, as our lives continue to progress along their winding paths and our personal dramas ratchet up a notch or three, all connected, all beholden to the same energetic input that must find its resolution through some form of activity, some means of resolution. All of the voices, shouting, screaming, crying, complaining, querulous and fearful at heart, the anger, the rage but a front masking the underlying terror. Despite the noise, there seems to be no resolution possible. They all can’t seem to hear each other because the chatter in their own minds is too loud.

The chatter that lies between the stillness that is your Truth and the world without. The chatter that is continuous for some people. The chatter that streams forth in a constant volley of unthinking discursiveness for some, the chatter that is released after considered but still inadequate rumination in others.

The chatter that it is our goal in life to still.

What? You can still the chatter?

Yes. You can.

But why would I want to still the chatter? It is my thoughts!

No, it is your ego’s thoughts. You are not your ego. 

But my ego is my personality! My history, my life, my experiences! My likes, my dislikes, everything! My ego is who I am!

That is what most everybody thinks. That is what our life experiences seem to tell us, at least. The life experiences that make up our personal history. Our childhoods with our parents and siblings, our time in school, our friends, our secrets and our shames, our triumphs and our joys. These are the things that we count on to represent our journey through life, these are the things that we recount when people ask us about ourselves, who we are, what our biography is, what our life is about. For those of us who are a bit more thoughtful, we might even put them in some sort of topical order and call that our path through life, as if the details of our journey are the sum of our experience and make up the totality of what we have gained along the way.

What do you mean, I am not my ego?

Your ego is limited. You are limitless.

Remember. Think back. Examine your memories. For many of you, there will be at least one that is characterized by stillness. By some moment or collection of moments when you looked around at the world and you realized that you were a part of it. There were no thoughts in this memory. Only wonder, what some might call an epiphany. It might have been when you were looking at a newborn baby, or a loved one, or a pet, or even a sunset or some other scene of natural beauty. Some moment in your life when you got it, when you understood that you were a part of something grander than the petty dramas of your life, the likes and dislikes, the hatreds and loves.

Many of us have these memories because, in those moments, we had connected with something within ourselves that is usually hidden. Something quiescent but that is always present, that is always there, watching, behind the thoughts, behind the imagination, behind the memories, behind the emotions. Something still. Something pervasive. Something that is definitely present, that is recording every single instant, every thought, every iota of information both conscious and unconscious that passes before your eyes, that crosses your mind. If you stop, right now, close your eyes and sit for a moment, turning your attention inward toward your thoughts, delving deeper than the discursive chatter that typifies the mental workings of most people, you will catch a glimpse of that something. Try it.

But what is it?

It is you.

But isn’t it the same thing as my ego? My personality?

No. 

It is what remains when your personality is gone. It is what remains when your ego dissolves. It is what remains when you die. It is consciousness. It is unbound, it is eternal, it is infinite. It is awareness. It is vast, it is inscrutable, it is impenetrable.

There are many spiritual traditions that attempt to describe it but since it is indescribable, they resort to parables, riddles and koans. It can only be experienced. It can only be realized through intense inner scrutiny and personal mental work for the purpose of stilling the discursive tendency of the ego in order to get behind it, to get beyond it, to get to the crux of who you are. It is the meaning of the ancient saying, Know Thyself. It is the meaning of the ancient truism, As Above, So Below. it is the meaning of the ancient recognition that God is Within.

It is the most ancient of mysteries, hidden in plain sight, shouting out its presence to those deaf to its voice. It is the space of emptiness that is not emptiness, the creative void of potential within each of us that connects us to the creative void of potential that is the Multiverse itself, that is God itself. It is where the many gods and goddesses spring from, much like humanity itself, it is where the nature spirits and the ultradimensional consciousnesses arise, descend through the levels of materialization and take on form, where God splits and multiplies unto infinity playing at separation to experience itself in all of its diverse unity, a multitude of seemingly cacophonous voices expressing the will of one overriding consciousness, one overriding life, one overriding love.

Wait, all of that is too much. My life is hard enough just dealing with the daily grind.

It is not enough. You must realize. You cannot Awaken until you do.

But why? Why can’t I just live my life? Why do I have to think about things like this?

That is exactly the problem. Too much thinking.

An Ant’s Life: Humanity on the cusp … again

Today when my partner, my son and I went out for a run I was pushing the stroller over a cobblestone path. I often look down where I’m pushing it to make sure that I’m not running over any insects. To be sure, I don’t do this all of the time, but today, I looked down for an instant to find an ant rushing across our path and then freezing, right in front of the wheel of the stroller. Before I could stop the stroller we were already over the ant and it was dead.

What if we, humans, were like ants? Going about our business, living in and enjoying our civilizations. We’ve got our leaders, our friends, kin groups and jobs. Engaging in the dramas of our individual lives, participating in our societies, dealing with the environment. Then one day, as we are doing our thing, we look up, see something outside of our normative experience and we freeze.

When dealing with entities outside of our normal experience, humans do indeed tend to freeze. Ants, dogs, cows, horses, fine. These, we can handle with varying but generally mundane responses. But with krytpozoological specimens, non-human aliens and ultra-dimensionals, we tend to lock up. And this is, of course, the way it should be, for most people.

In cultures where such interactions have occurred over many thousands of years there is quite a bit of healthy respect and not a little bit of fear. There are Shamans and rituals steeped with libations and offerings, even bodies offered up for these entities to possess for a little while in order to enjoy physicality and pass on wisdom and prophecies. The general populations of these civilizations know that human understanding is limited when compared to that of these entities beyond the scope of everyday human activity and they treat them accordingly. If there is the sense of a trespass made by humans against them, then forgiveness and amends are sought in hopes of appeasing the ultra-dimensionals. For that ant whose path so unfortunately crossed ours earlier today, it was simply its time to go.

There are a lot of people claiming to be in contact with extra-terrestrial civilizations and higher dimensional entities these days. They pass on many messages but the gist of them are that the Earth is in the midst of a fundamental shift and alien-human contact, rather than decreasing, will increase in the coming months and years. There are a multitude of variations of those proclamations, from catastrophic earth changes to spiritual ascension for the entire human family. Accompanying this increase in multi-dimensional communication is the push-back from alarmed groups of humans who either disbelieve those carrying these messages or warn against being taken in by what may be hostile non-terrestrial and higher-dimensional civilizations.

Consider, again, the ant. The ant has very little idea about human civilization. When thinking about the difference in perception between humans and animals, it is quite probable that ants don’t perceive time or space in a manner similar to humans. While we can observe them and apply meaning to their actions and ways of living in the world, it is questionable whether they can do the same to ours. There is an order of understanding, or a dimensional difference in consciousness, that acts as a barrier to that understanding.

A consideration to seriously take into account is a human attempt at understanding the next higher physical dimension from ours. Dimensions 1 – 3 go from a point to our 3rd dimensional reality. The 4th dimension is the realm of the the Tesseract, an object that can be represented in 3 dimensions by the 4-dimensional hypercube, a physical structure that looks to us like a square within a square. For our purposes, it represents the intricacy of the 4th dimension when compared to the 3rd, the realm of our perceptions. Entities who inhabit this dimension would have a much greater ability to perceive than those who inhabit lower dimensions, as there is so much more complexity where they’re from than there is here. So, much as we look at an ant crossing our path and think, “oh, what a simple creature, I’d better be careful not to hurt it”, these ultra-dimensional entities may look at us as we cross their paths and think much the same.

Attempting to understand the perspective from higher dimensions is perceptually difficult as long as our capabilities are limited by linear thinking. Looking at how the world would be perceived by someone living a 2-dimensional version of our lives, helps.

As we move into the last half of 2012 and into the timeline beyond this fateful year, it is incumbent upon us each to examine ourselves for traces of linear as opposed to multidimensional thinking. There are many examples of linear thinking in our lives. Believing that people can’t changing is one. Limiting other people’s potentialities.

Believing that we have all of the answers is another. Perceiving reality as uni-dimensional rather than multi-dimensional. Within each of our minds there are limits that we place upon our own capacities to open up further and perceive more aspects of reality than we ever have before. It is possible, even at the human level, to perceive things beyond the uni-dimensional. We can open ourselves to be more encompassing of the multi-dimensional if we take the time and make the effort to do so. The only thing stopping us from doing so is ourselves.

The main reason why we don’t is because we are afraid. Afraid of the unknown. Afraid of finding out that the world really is not as stable or as safe as we might currently be fooling ourselves into half-believing. Especially in these days and times of failing currencies, high unemployment and world-changes that stretch the limits of our understanding. There is so much going on at so many levels in our lives and beyond that when that large shadow of the unknown falls over us and we look up to see something strange, we … freeze. Just like that ant.

Times they are’a changin’, as some bard once sang. Even though cultures around the world are familiar with the existence of aliens and ultradimensionals, Western civilization is on the cusp of their reintroduction. One of the disadvantages of ruling the world for a while is the hubris that inevitably accompanies the mass transition to larger frameworks of reality.  The West has had a couple of hundred years to bask in the limelight of the scientific method and advances that have brought the world back to the space age. And now that we are on the verge of catapulting ourselves back into the void – both inner and outer – it should come as no surprise to find out that it is inhabited.

But even more importantly than that, is that what lies beyond our sight – both inner and outer - has been with us all along. Human panspermic origins, ancient astronauts, repeated catastrophic extinctions and the remnants of high technological societies, all within the context of astronomical and solar systemic cycles that repeat endlessly, heralding changing energetic circumstances upon and around Sol-System. It is just humanity’s time again, to widen our minds, to leave behind the childish perspective of uni-dimensional thinking and broaden our perspective to encompass greater truths. No matter how the details work out or when, it is inevitable that this shift in perspective occurs. If humanity is to manifest its full potential all of the social ills that we cherish so dearly here on planet Earth will have to be given up in favor of participation in the larger community of souls at the galactic and universal level.

I imagine myself going back in time to this morning and stopping just in time to save that ant’s life. Bending down and picking it up with a finger and bringing it close to my head and attempting to stare directly into its compound eyes and communicate with it, perhaps just saying:

“Hello, sorry about that. Next time you should look up before you cross the path.”

And, in some form of insect language transmitted by touch and smell, I might be given to understand the ant’s reply, which might be something to the effect of:

“Thank you God, for sparing my life.”

But I can’t go back in time and the ant is dead. I hope that we each fare a bit better when we have our own personal encounters with higher forms of consciousness.

A Comedy of Errors: True responsibility versus the social compact

People use the word responsibility all the time. Some times in reference to things that they feel that they have to take care of and other times in reference to other people and their lack thereof. The word can be comforting or it can cause pain. It can be a weapon or a healing balm. It’s use and meaning can vary over time and space. To different people, it can mean different things. In different parts of the world it can mean different things. And yet, for such a powerful term, it is curiously unremarked upon.

re·spon·si·bil·i·ty (r-spns-bl-t)

n. pl. re·spon·si·bil·i·ties

1. The state, quality, or fact of being responsible.

2. Something for which one is responsible; a duty, obligation, or burden.

If you break the word down into its component parts it looks something like this:

re·sponse  (r-spns)

n.

1. The act of responding.

2. A reply or an answer.

3. A reaction, as that of an organism or a mechanism, to a specific stimulus.

a·ble (bl)

adj. a·bler, a·blest

1. Having sufficient power or resources to accomplish something: a singer able to reach high notes; a detergent able to remove stains.

2. Usage Problem Susceptible to action or treatment: The brakes were able to be fixed.

3. Especially capable or talented.

 A duty then. A burden, an obligation to respond, reply, react or give an answer and being capable or having the resources or power to accomplish it.

We are responsible according to our own personal choices to self, family, friends and society to varying degrees. We each have examples in our lives of things that we feel that we are responsible for. Responsibility is a choice.

It is a choice to respond and the ability to do so. To react to a situation in a capable manner.

Individually, we are each responsible for our own thoughts, words and actions. Because the mind can be controlled, every thought that we have is a choice. Because the muscles that move the body can be controlled, every word we say and action we take is also a choice.

We don’t have to think certain things. If we choose to and practice, we can turn off the constant running chatter of thoughts that passes through our brain. Dwelling on the past and the future is not necessary. Dwelling on thoughts of people and situations that give rise to feelings of jealousy, avarice, hatred, passion or even love is a conscious choice. It is a choice that takes us out of the moment, out of the Now, and into the indeterminate space of contemplation, removing us from our outer environment and immersing us within the inner creative environment of imagination and emotivity.

The thoughts we allow our minds to entertain are always of the imaginative variety as none of them are based in reality in any way other than containing a cast of characters based upon real people, or a series of events based upon what we think are potential occurrences given the information that we possess at the time. How we recall the past, how we create the future with our thoughts is totally constructed by the series of synapses and connections within our neural nets and the emotional content that the images give rise to and that we use to determine which potential path holds the best possible outcome for our current emotional state and belief system.

None of it is real until we attempt to make it so. We remember selectively. Our perceptions are bounded by our capacity to process information and our knowledge bases, which limits our ability to understand everything going on around us. Often, things did not happen in the past in the manner that we envisioned, nor did the events hold the emotive weights to others that we might have given them at the time.

When we think about current events, our perceptions fail us as well. We do not have all of the information, and yet we attempt to forecast other people’s actions, or how situations will play out. None of it comes to pass outside of our minds and in the ‘real world’ in exactly the manner we had envisioned it either because there are other actors involved. Other people who are acting out the plays they’ve also envisioned in their minds. The Comedy of Errors that our lives then become is in direct correlation to the lack of clarity and knowledge that we bring to the table in each circumstance and instance of interaction with other sentient beings and the natural world.

The interplay of multiple consciousnesses engaged in personal, mental dramas upon the sound-stage of 3D reality is life as we know it. Our engagement with the social system and our interpersonal connections to others comprise our levels of responsibility. The social compacts that we agree to as we mature within the different cultural realms of production across the world determine the nature of that responsibility.

As individuals living within greater systems that integrate ritual and belief in a criss-crossing interweaving of institutions and interactions, lesser and greater forms of coalescence around ideologies and material manifestations of such in all areas of people activity including capacity limitation, intellectual bounding, moral culpability, interpersonal interactivity and individual and collective responsibility, we make the conscious choice to maintain the system with our acquiescence and our mental and physical support. We become the system and uphold the system as an agreement with others within the system.

Our responsibilities are then determined by outside forces that we have internalized. Our choices are then bounded by a complex of ideas and formulations that limit our capacity to respond creatively to life and to the unlimited potentialities that surround us because of this mental encapsulation that we subscribe to and represent in our words and actions, if not our thoughts. We become beholden to family, to friends, to society. We limit our thoughts, our words, our actions based upon what others think of us or because of our fear of the potential ramifications of going beyond the boundaries and the imposed responsibility of societal production.

Responsibility in the cultural sense often has to do with the continued propagation of society. Inter-generational societal production. It is almost as if cultures were alive, thinking and conscious entities comprised of countless individual souls who live and die within them much like cells within organic bodies. They are born and die without remark but the body lives on. Humans engage different processes of societal production during their lifetimes, acting very much like cells and we often attempt to pass on our roles to our children, who then pass them on to theirs. We re-create what are often outdated memes as we are conditioned to do even as the world changes around us. Culture must conform to the world within it is expressed, response must be commiserate with ability.

At a certain point, those who seek freedom through spiritual practice come to recognize the limitations of societal responsibility and make different choices. It becomes possible to recognize personal responsibility and to cast off imposed structures that are not necessary for one’s own progress in life. But the ramifications of such are not without consequence. Social censure and castigation, banishment or disowning, disapproval, anger, disappointment and every other form of emotional and physical punishment available, even unto bodily harm and death, are the potential costs an individual must pay for their mental and physical freedom.

The higher notions of philosophical and spiritual responsibility of collective involvement and interactivity is bolstered by the quantum realities of entanglement and superposition. Everything and everyone is connected in a web of consciousness and choice is a matter of perception and attention resulting in the collapse of the wave function into a pattern of lived reality corresponding to personal knowledge or belief. We are individuals acting within a collective, affecting it but possessing our own unique perspectives. We engage others’ perspectives and enter into and exit different time-lines and realities with the course of each series of thoughts, words and actions. This is the real nature of responsibility: to be true to ourselves and, by doing so, being true to the whole.

The only physical responsibility we are born with is to ourselves. Whatever we do is our destiny; is the way it is supposed to be. The only spiritual responsibility we are born with is to our own  evolution of consciousness. However we individually evolve is of benefit to the All, is an expression of exactly how things are supposed to turn out. Everything else that we pick up along the way that cause us to doubt ourselves, to self-flaggelate and to entertain worry and regret is to misunderstand the nature of incarnation and life and to misappropriate time and energy upon pointless recrimination.

Life is not designed to be thought out, it is designed to be lived. Taking it as it comes, immersing yourself in the Now opens up the vistas of possibility unto the infinite, releases flows of energetic potentiality that expand human ability beyond dreams and material limitations. Choose your responsibilities wisely and make the choices that lighten your soul instead of those that increase the burden. Accept where you are and what you can do based upon your options in the Now. Be prepared for immediate change by keeping your mind clear and open and watching for the synchronicities that lead you upon your soul’s perfect path.

But mostly, do what you have to do. Own your thoughts, words and actions without regret. It is our most pressing responsibility in life.