Displaying items by tag: Spirit
Grael Corsini talks about her vision of the Goddess Bridgit and the building of the Goddess Temple of Ashland.
Mitch Horowitz is the author of: Occult America
has been a recent guest on New Realities television a has written a great article about that fuzzy boundary between cult and true spiritual practce.
Check out his article in the Wall Street Journal:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703529004576160363526909654.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEFTTopOpinion
Carlos Barrios, Mayan elder and Ajq'ij (is a ceremonial priest and spiritual guide) of the Eagle Clan. Carlos initiated an investigation into the different Mayan calendars circulating. Carlos along with his brother Gerardo studied with many teachers and interviewed nearly 600 traditional Mayan elders to widen their scope of knowledge. Carlos found out quickly there were several conflicting interpretations of Mayan hieroglyphs, petroglyphs, Sacred Books of 'Chilam Balam' and various ancient text. Carlos found some strong words for those who may have contributed to the confusion:
http://johnsmallman.wordpress.com/author/johnsmallman
Messages to assist you in awakening from your dream state are flowing in from many sources as the moment for this exhilarating event draws ever closer. The number of sentient beings offering you encouragement and support is enormous because there are so many of you, and not one of you is alone or without guidance and love. If you are having difficulty accessing it or believing it, it is because your fear of disappointment and your doubts of your worthiness to be a part of the grand awakening, or your doubts about the grand awakening actually occurring, do distract you, and make it very difficult for you to feel the love and sense the guidance you are being offered.
I have previously stressed the importance of taking time out regularly throughout the day to relax and quieten your minds so that your illusory worries and anxieties do not overwhelm you. When you forget to do this, or when you do take time out alone but allow your worries to hold your attention, your support for the illusion intensifies and your doubts multiply. Make apoint of noticing your anxious and doubting thoughts; notice that they are thoughts from which you can disengage. You do not have to be absorbed into them so that it seems that you and your worries are one — for they are merely thoughts and ideas that you can disregard.
You have all experienced people sharing their thoughts with you — thoughts with which you do not resonate — and you have had no difficulty letting them go and paying them no attention. Many of the thoughts that float into your minds are just like those. It is solely because humans tend to identify themselves with the thoughts flowing into their minds that you find it hard not to attend to them all as though they had great value for you. But you are not your thoughts, and you can see this very easily by noticing any one thought that occurs to you and choosing to replace it with a different one. The thought departs, and you remain.
In your daily quiet periods you can practice observing your thoughts as they flow into your minds, and make decisions about whether or not you want to pay them some attention. As you do this and choose not to attend to some of them, your minds will become quieter, leaving spaces for answers from your guides— to questions for which you have been seeking answers — to slip into your awareness. When you allow this to happen it shows you that you do entertain many thoughts that do you no good, and that in fact disturb your peace of mind. When you become aware of this you will find it far easier to acknowledge them and release them, and in so doing you will find yourselves feeling calmer and more peaceful as the stress of daily living reduces, and the thoughts that cause you worry and anxiety occupy far less of your time. Frequently you will observe that many of them are about what someone else might or might not think, say, or do, and there is nothing that you can do about the issue, except let it go. If it becomes necessary to respond you will do so at the appropriate time . . . dwelling on it in advance is often rather counterproductive.
Messages to assist you in awakening from your dream state are flowing in from many sources as the moment for this exhilarating event draws ever closer. The number of sentient beings offering you encouragement and support is enormous because there are so many of you, and not one of you is alone or without guidance and love. If you are having difficulty accessing it or believing it, it is because your fear of disappointment and your doubts of your worthiness to be a part of the grand awakening, or your doubts about the grand awakening actually occurring, do distract you, and make it very difficult for you to feel the love and sense the guidance you are being offered.
I have previously stressed the importance of taking time out regularly throughout the day to relax and quieten your minds so that your illusory worries and anxieties do not overwhelm you. When you forget to do this, or when you do take time out alone but allow your worries to hold your attention, your support for the illusion intensifies and your doubts multiply. Make apoint of noticing your anxious and doubting thoughts; notice that they are thoughts from which you can disengage. You do not have to be absorbed into them so that it seems that you and your worries are one — for they are merely thoughts and ideas that you can disregard.
You have all experienced people sharing their thoughts with you — thoughts with which you do not resonate — and you have had no difficulty letting them go and paying them no attention. Many of the thoughts that float into your minds are just like those. It is solely because humans tend to identify themselves with the thoughts flowing into their minds that you find it hard not to attend to them all as though they had great value for you. But you are not your thoughts, and you can see this very easily by noticing any one thought that occurs to you and choosing to replace it with a different one. The thought departs, and you remain.
In your daily quiet periods you can practice observing your thoughts as they flow into your minds, and make decisions about whether or not you want to pay them some attention. As you do this and choose not to attend to some of them, your minds will become quieter, leaving spaces for answers from your guides— to questions for which you have been seeking answers — to slip into your awareness. When you allow this to happen it shows you that you do entertain many thoughts that do you no good, and that in fact disturb your peace of mind. When you become aware of this you will find it far easier to acknowledge them and release them, and in so doing you will find yourselves feeling calmer and more peaceful as the stress of daily living reduces, and the thoughts that cause you worry and anxiety occupy far less of your time. Frequently you will observe that many of them are about what someone else might or might not think, say, or do, and there is nothing that you can do about the issue, except let it go. If it becomes necessary to respond you will do so at the appropriate time . . . dwelling on it in advance is often rather counterproductive.
Author of Angels in my Hair
Order the book at: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/Lorna_Byrne
From: Inspiration magazine -on 13 December 2009
“Katie noticed a woman sitting in the chair by the side of the bed. She sat with her legs apart as an un-refined old lady might & held her hands in front of her, making inter-locking rings of her thumbs & fore-fingers. She looked wonder-full to Katie, voluptuous — an old lady in a dark paisley dress, her hair in a bun on top of her head. Before she eventually merged with THE LADY, Katie would ask others who were in the same room with her wherein she was watching THE LADY if they were also able to see THE LADY & no one but Katie was ever actually able to see THE LADY.
“The LADY stayed with her for as long as Katie needed her, approximately 7 years. Katie discovered that if she exaggerated any experience or deviated in the slightest manner from the TRUTH, then the LADY would be standing in the corner with her head down. Katie would feel her absence & move toward her & MY LADY would say without words : “I ABIDE ONLY IN TRUTH.”
Katie said about MY LADY: “ What I have come to know is that I projected the LADY. What happened with MY LADY is that I automatically projected her out there ... like a movie ... not on purpose, but as a result of a perceived painful limitation I was experiencing in this dimension. Some people would project Christ, others Krishna. I projected this fat LADY with a bun on her head, wearing a paisley dress. That’s who I could trust.”
The sudden transformation of Byron Katie serves as a remarkable testimony to the powers of spiritual resurrection that live in each of us.
Born Byron Kathleen Reid in Breckenridge, Texas, on December 6th, 1942, she was raised in the years following World War II in the small desert town of Needles, California. Her mother said that she was named Byron for money, after a wealthy second cousin offered financial support if the child was given his name, and she was named Kathleen for love. Growing up, everyone called her Katie.
Her home-maker mother and her father, a railroad worker, saw Katie grow from a quiet, thoughtful little girl into an aggressive, competitive teenager who sought to be the best in everything she did. A top student, she played piano and sang in a regional choir. Beautiful, energetic, and fun, Katie was voted first runner-up for queen of her high school prom.
At nineteen she married Robert, her high school sweetheart. They moved to Fresno; two sons and a daughter soon followed. Robert and Katie formed their own company as equal partners. When her marriage, like many, met with difficulties, Katie, a perfectionist and high achiever, suffered the belief that she was not enough. She began striving for the usual symbols of happiness and security — money, beauty, talent, and success.
Katie invested their mutual earnings in real estate. Within a few years, she and Robert owned shares of numerous buildings in Needles’s business district. They bought a grand riverfront house and threw lavish parties attended by an elite and influential local crowd. By the 1970s, Katie had become a millionaire.
Katie now had her long-sought success. She was doing big business, raising a family, living high. But it wasn’t enough; nothing pleased or satisfied her. In her increasingly frustrated and ultimately futile search for happiness through money and power, Katie had “bullied, intimidated, and badgered” anyone, even her husband and children, to get her way.
But in the midst of having everything and seeking more, her passion had turned to desperation. Her marriage with Robert became a battle of wills, her family life a series of skirmishes. They were all casualties, especially the children. “If I didn’t get my way,” Byron Katie said, “I would leave the house and take the children with me.”
The third time she did this, Robert got involved with another woman. This was a time of darkness for Katie and for her children, but the seeds had been sown long before. For years she had held back the darkness and emptiness with food, alcohol, tobacco, and constant striving. But her strategy took its toll; her progressive disintegration led to rages, alcohol abuse, and paranoia. At one point she bought a gun and kept it loaded under her bed. Finally, even her children feared her. When her marriage ended in 1976, Katie and the children wound up penniless in Barstow, California.
Then, in 1979, she married Paul, an old friend fifteen years her senior. When Paul was nineteen and Katie four, he had paved the street where she lived. She still recalled being captivated by his laughter; she had loved him even then. Katie and Paul began buying, fixing up, and reselling old houses and were soon quite wealthy — Katie still had the knack. Once again she had money, friends, a thriving career, and a family she loved. But the meaning had drained out of her existence. She felt herself dying inside.
Paul, a good man, had married Katie on her way down. He’d seen a couple of friends have nervous breakdowns. But he’d never witnessed anything like his wife’s terrifying descent. Katie had once taken on the world, charmed people, closed deals, made money. Now, afraid to leave the house, she went weeks without bathing, changing her clothes, or brushing her teeth.
She spent days in bed — drinking, smoking, raging, popping codeine, eating ice cream by the gallon. Her weight shot up to over two hundred pounds. Her torment and her rage were unrelieved: “Nothing felt good, nothing made me happy, nothing brought me peace. In the end I was obese and starving. I was in so much pain and the pills weren’t working. I was insane, a dead woman still breathing.”
Her children spun off in their own mad directions, fleeing their cyclone mother raging on her bed. Paul became Katie’s primary caretaker — her buffer to a world she now feared. During the first seven years of their marriage, Paul suffered four heart attacks; the strain of caring for his wife came close to killing him. Katie spent the last two of those years lying on the bed, her unchanged clothing often plastered to her body and her unwashed hair matted to her head.
In 1986, after his fourth heart attack, Paul took Katie, now 43 years old, to a half-way house. Because she was terrorizing the other clients, she was forcefully put in the attic by the therapists of the half-way house & the door of the attic was locked from the outside. Lying on the floor, she re-members that she lay there with closed eyes & had the thought: “ All I want now is TO DIE.”
Katie then opened up her eyes and saw a cockroach crawling across a human foot. She did not, in that moment, know what a foot, or for that matter what anything, was. All was a mystery. Byron Kathleen Reid had in fact “died.”
Yet the sight of the insect, the foot, the leg, and the room filled her with delight and awe. She was a new-born — born from the dead — gazing in wonder at Life. “It was the most amazing thing,” she recalled. “I looked at the foot and the leg and I had never seen anything so beautiful and marvelous. It was the same with the floor, with the cockroach, and with the light, seeing it for the first time…and the unfolding of it was so incredible…total, total joy.”
The world was new. Katie had awakened from “an ancient dream.” Whatever had previously obscured her view of life’s inherent perfection was gone. Now, from moment to moment, she saw and joyously embraced reality exactly as it was. Everything she gazed upon, within and without, glowed with radiant Life.
We may never know what catalyzed this simple yet absolute turn-around in perception and consciousness. But one thing was certain: Overnight, Katie had moved from suicidal despair to ecstatic freedom. The mad-woman had vanished. In her place appeared a beautiful changeling, an innocent child.
No one, least of all Katie, understood what had happened. Her daughter Roxann at first believed that her mother was playing a trick. Yet she saw a different person come home. “Her face was changed completely,” Roxann reported. “Her eyes were cleared. She was not the same person.”
Understandably, Roxann feared the return of the mad-woman she had known. But what had happened to Katie persisted and only deepened over time. Her past behind her, her future yet to unfold, she now lived in the eternal present. Her contact with everyday reality — with people, objects, and situations — though at times bewildering, continued to fill her with wonder & joy.
For a time, Roxann led her mother — still absorbed in a child-like state of awe — around by the hand. Katie would spontaneously hug people on the street — friends, strangers, the homeless — with equal delight. Not surprisingly, perhaps sensing her unconditional love and acceptance, many let her hug them. She was called “the lit lady” & many would label her as “too lit.”
For seven years after the awakening, inner revelations came to Katie, and she tried to put them into words to share with others: “…there is only love…there is no time…unlearning is everything….” But she had leaped across a chasm of consciousness, and no words seemed capable of building a bridge for those who couldn’t see to the other side. She said of that time: “I was wild with love, mad with love.” But words couldn’t convey it. She had to live her Self-realization to sustain it.
Katie stopped trying to tell people what they hadn’t asked to hear and began to simply love — to love those she had known, those she had harmed, and those she now met — no longer expecting them to understand, to be good, to love her back, or to be anything other than who they were. She was turning down the burner on being “too lit” & finding a new center.
Living the truth had nothing to do with changing other people. Who they were, and what they did, was their business. Her only business was to love them unconditionally. By living in this way, Katie gradually regained the trust of the family she had nearly destroyed, and helped to heal them.
One night six months after her awakening, Katie experienced a kind of spiritual agony from the tension of trying to live and love in a world that did not yet understand or accept who she was. An old woman appeared to her, sitting in a chair beside the bed, “a wonderful, voluptuous old lady with her hair tied in a bun.” In this altered state, she saw herself and Paul, lying on the bed, as two primal beings who didn’t yet realize that they didn’t have to suffer. Life itself was unfolding perfectly.
For the next seven years, the marvelous old woman appeared to guide Katie: “What I’ve come to know is that I projected the lady…like a movie…as a result of a perceived painful limitation I was experiencing in this dimension. We give ourselves exactly what we need. We supply our own medicine. Today I don’t wait for angels. I AM always the angel I have been awaiting, and so are you. It’s not out there, it’s in here. Some people would project Christ, others Krishna. I projected a fat lady with a bun on her head wearing a paisley dress — that’s who I could trust. Now I trust All. I woke up knowing that “God is everything— everything is GOOD.” There is no exception in my experience. Why would I not live this? Anything else is suffering.”
Katie’s thoughts returned, of course, as thoughts do — and with them judgments, fears, and expectations. At such times she felt herself slipping from the freedom of her awakening into the mind of suffering. But whenever this happened, she worked her way back by a compassionate vigilance, inspecting the thoughts, beliefs, and false assumptions that separated her from others and set her against life. Doing THE WORK — as she called it — returned her gracefully to the pristine awareness & immaculate innocence of the original awakening.
THE WORK became her constant practice. Through this process, and her unconditional acceptance of life, Katie made peace with each moment — and with every event past or present. “All that I went through — every breath,” she said, “was what it took for me to finally wake up. All experience teaches love in the long run. All needs are supplied. Every experience of Life is for this.”
Byron Katie went on to travel worldwide teaching the Work — the fruit of her past struggles, her extraordinary awakening, and her continual surrender to Life as it arises, moment to moment.
***********
Bios for Dan Millman and Doug Childers:
The above excerpt about Byron Katie’s awakening is from the book Bridge BETWEEN Worlds:
http://www.amazon.com/Bridge-Between-Worlds-Extraordinary-Experiences/dp/1932073264/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1295179040&sr=8-1
To read this entire article by Millman & Childers on the WORLD WIDE WEB, go to:
http://www.dreammanifesto.com/rebirth-madwoman-resurrection-byron-katie.html
“Katie noticed a woman sitting in the chair by the side of the bed. She sat with her legs apart as an un-refined old lady might & held her hands in front of her, making inter-locking rings of her thumbs & fore-fingers. She looked wonder-full to Katie, voluptuous — an old lady in a dark paisley dress, her hair in a bun on top of her head. Before she eventually merged with THE LADY, Katie would ask others who were in the same room with her wherein she was watching THE LADY if they were also able to see THE LADY & no one but Katie was ever actually able to see THE LADY.
“The LADY stayed with her for as long as Katie needed her, approximately 7 years. Katie discovered that if she exaggerated any experience or deviated in the slightest manner from the TRUTH, then the LADY would be standing in the corner with her head down. Katie would feel her absence & move toward her & MY LADY would say without words : “I ABIDE ONLY IN TRUTH.”
Katie said about MY LADY: “ What I have come to know is that I projected the LADY. What happened with MY LADY is that I automatically projected her out there ... like a movie ... not on purpose, but as a result of a perceived painful limitation I was experiencing in this dimension. Some people would project Christ, others Krishna. I projected this fat LADY with a bun on her head, wearing a paisley dress. That’s who I could trust.”
The sudden transformation of Byron Katie serves as a remarkable testimony to the powers of spiritual resurrection that live in each of us.
Born Byron Kathleen Reid in Breckenridge, Texas, on December 6th, 1942, she was raised in the years following World War II in the small desert town of Needles, California. Her mother said that she was named Byron for money, after a wealthy second cousin offered financial support if the child was given his name, and she was named Kathleen for love. Growing up, everyone called her Katie.
Her home-maker mother and her father, a railroad worker, saw Katie grow from a quiet, thoughtful little girl into an aggressive, competitive teenager who sought to be the best in everything she did. A top student, she played piano and sang in a regional choir. Beautiful, energetic, and fun, Katie was voted first runner-up for queen of her high school prom.
At nineteen she married Robert, her high school sweetheart. They moved to Fresno; two sons and a daughter soon followed. Robert and Katie formed their own company as equal partners. When her marriage, like many, met with difficulties, Katie, a perfectionist and high achiever, suffered the belief that she was not enough. She began striving for the usual symbols of happiness and security — money, beauty, talent, and success.
Katie invested their mutual earnings in real estate. Within a few years, she and Robert owned shares of numerous buildings in Needles’s business district. They bought a grand riverfront house and threw lavish parties attended by an elite and influential local crowd. By the 1970s, Katie had become a millionaire.
Katie now had her long-sought success. She was doing big business, raising a family, living high. But it wasn’t enough; nothing pleased or satisfied her. In her increasingly frustrated and ultimately futile search for happiness through money and power, Katie had “bullied, intimidated, and badgered” anyone, even her husband and children, to get her way.
But in the midst of having everything and seeking more, her passion had turned to desperation. Her marriage with Robert became a battle of wills, her family life a series of skirmishes. They were all casualties, especially the children. “If I didn’t get my way,” Byron Katie said, “I would leave the house and take the children with me.”
The third time she did this, Robert got involved with another woman. This was a time of darkness for Katie and for her children, but the seeds had been sown long before. For years she had held back the darkness and emptiness with food, alcohol, tobacco, and constant striving. But her strategy took its toll; her progressive disintegration led to rages, alcohol abuse, and paranoia. At one point she bought a gun and kept it loaded under her bed. Finally, even her children feared her. When her marriage ended in 1976, Katie and the children wound up penniless in Barstow, California.
Then, in 1979, she married Paul, an old friend fifteen years her senior. When Paul was nineteen and Katie four, he had paved the street where she lived. She still recalled being captivated by his laughter; she had loved him even then. Katie and Paul began buying, fixing up, and reselling old houses and were soon quite wealthy — Katie still had the knack. Once again she had money, friends, a thriving career, and a family she loved. But the meaning had drained out of her existence. She felt herself dying inside.
Paul, a good man, had married Katie on her way down. He’d seen a couple of friends have nervous breakdowns. But he’d never witnessed anything like his wife’s terrifying descent. Katie had once taken on the world, charmed people, closed deals, made money. Now, afraid to leave the house, she went weeks without bathing, changing her clothes, or brushing her teeth.
She spent days in bed — drinking, smoking, raging, popping codeine, eating ice cream by the gallon. Her weight shot up to over two hundred pounds. Her torment and her rage were unrelieved: “Nothing felt good, nothing made me happy, nothing brought me peace. In the end I was obese and starving. I was in so much pain and the pills weren’t working. I was insane, a dead woman still breathing.”
Her children spun off in their own mad directions, fleeing their cyclone mother raging on her bed. Paul became Katie’s primary caretaker — her buffer to a world she now feared. During the first seven years of their marriage, Paul suffered four heart attacks; the strain of caring for his wife came close to killing him. Katie spent the last two of those years lying on the bed, her unchanged clothing often plastered to her body and her unwashed hair matted to her head.
In 1986, after his fourth heart attack, Paul took Katie, now 43 years old, to a half-way house. Because she was terrorizing the other clients, she was forcefully put in the attic by the therapists of the half-way house & the door of the attic was locked from the outside. Lying on the floor, she re-members that she lay there with closed eyes & had the thought: “ All I want now is TO DIE.”
Katie then opened up her eyes and saw a cockroach crawling across a human foot. She did not, in that moment, know what a foot, or for that matter what anything, was. All was a mystery. Byron Kathleen Reid had in fact “died.”
Yet the sight of the insect, the foot, the leg, and the room filled her with delight and awe. She was a new-born — born from the dead — gazing in wonder at Life. “It was the most amazing thing,” she recalled. “I looked at the foot and the leg and I had never seen anything so beautiful and marvelous. It was the same with the floor, with the cockroach, and with the light, seeing it for the first time…and the unfolding of it was so incredible…total, total joy.”
The world was new. Katie had awakened from “an ancient dream.” Whatever had previously obscured her view of life’s inherent perfection was gone. Now, from moment to moment, she saw and joyously embraced reality exactly as it was. Everything she gazed upon, within and without, glowed with radiant Life.
We may never know what catalyzed this simple yet absolute turn-around in perception and consciousness. But one thing was certain: Overnight, Katie had moved from suicidal despair to ecstatic freedom. The mad-woman had vanished. In her place appeared a beautiful changeling, an innocent child.
No one, least of all Katie, understood what had happened. Her daughter Roxann at first believed that her mother was playing a trick. Yet she saw a different person come home. “Her face was changed completely,” Roxann reported. “Her eyes were cleared. She was not the same person.”
Understandably, Roxann feared the return of the mad-woman she had known. But what had happened to Katie persisted and only deepened over time. Her past behind her, her future yet to unfold, she now lived in the eternal present. Her contact with everyday reality — with people, objects, and situations — though at times bewildering, continued to fill her with wonder & joy.
For a time, Roxann led her mother — still absorbed in a child-like state of awe — around by the hand. Katie would spontaneously hug people on the street — friends, strangers, the homeless — with equal delight. Not surprisingly, perhaps sensing her unconditional love and acceptance, many let her hug them. She was called “the lit lady” & many would label her as “too lit.”
For seven years after the awakening, inner revelations came to Katie, and she tried to put them into words to share with others: “…there is only love…there is no time…unlearning is everything….” But she had leaped across a chasm of consciousness, and no words seemed capable of building a bridge for those who couldn’t see to the other side. She said of that time: “I was wild with love, mad with love.” But words couldn’t convey it. She had to live her Self-realization to sustain it.
Katie stopped trying to tell people what they hadn’t asked to hear and began to simply love — to love those she had known, those she had harmed, and those she now met — no longer expecting them to understand, to be good, to love her back, or to be anything other than who they were. She was turning down the burner on being “too lit” & finding a new center.
Living the truth had nothing to do with changing other people. Who they were, and what they did, was their business. Her only business was to love them unconditionally. By living in this way, Katie gradually regained the trust of the family she had nearly destroyed, and helped to heal them.
One night six months after her awakening, Katie experienced a kind of spiritual agony from the tension of trying to live and love in a world that did not yet understand or accept who she was. An old woman appeared to her, sitting in a chair beside the bed, “a wonderful, voluptuous old lady with her hair tied in a bun.” In this altered state, she saw herself and Paul, lying on the bed, as two primal beings who didn’t yet realize that they didn’t have to suffer. Life itself was unfolding perfectly.
For the next seven years, the marvelous old woman appeared to guide Katie: “What I’ve come to know is that I projected the lady…like a movie…as a result of a perceived painful limitation I was experiencing in this dimension. We give ourselves exactly what we need. We supply our own medicine. Today I don’t wait for angels. I AM always the angel I have been awaiting, and so are you. It’s not out there, it’s in here. Some people would project Christ, others Krishna. I projected a fat lady with a bun on her head wearing a paisley dress — that’s who I could trust. Now I trust All. I woke up knowing that “God is everything— everything is GOOD.” There is no exception in my experience. Why would I not live this? Anything else is suffering.”
Katie’s thoughts returned, of course, as thoughts do — and with them judgments, fears, and expectations. At such times she felt herself slipping from the freedom of her awakening into the mind of suffering. But whenever this happened, she worked her way back by a compassionate vigilance, inspecting the thoughts, beliefs, and false assumptions that separated her from others and set her against life. Doing THE WORK — as she called it — returned her gracefully to the pristine awareness & immaculate innocence of the original awakening.
THE WORK became her constant practice. Through this process, and her unconditional acceptance of life, Katie made peace with each moment — and with every event past or present. “All that I went through — every breath,” she said, “was what it took for me to finally wake up. All experience teaches love in the long run. All needs are supplied. Every experience of Life is for this.”
Byron Katie went on to travel worldwide teaching the Work — the fruit of her past struggles, her extraordinary awakening, and her continual surrender to Life as it arises, moment to moment.
***********
Bios for Dan Millman and Doug Childers:
The above excerpt about Byron Katie’s awakening is from the book Bridge BETWEEN Worlds:
http://www.amazon.com/Bridge-Between-Worlds-Extraordinary-Experiences/dp/1932073264/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1295179040&sr=8-1
To read this entire article by Millman & Childers on the WORLD WIDE WEB, go to:
http://www.dreammanifesto.com/rebirth-madwoman-resurrection-byron-katie.html
Spiritual practice is the care of our energy bodies on all levels; from the physical, mental, emotional levels to the most subtle energetic forces moving through us and out into the cosmos. Mantra, traditionally the repetition of the names of God, is the use of sound, or frequency, to set the tone, vibration, or "Word" at cause in your creation, which is your Life. A more well known form of Mantra in the western culture is Music.
About 10 years ago I found myself taken over by a continuous stream of thought about all the pain, suffering, and heartache I had ever experienced and all the places in the world reflecting these aspects of life. While the observer in me, well aware of its impact on my health and well being, wanted to shift it, the momentum behind it seemed unstoppable.
At one point a voice within me rose up over the noise and said, " Sing!". That week I joined the Interfaith choir at One Spirit Learning Alliance <http://www.onespiritinterfaith.org/> and in a few short weeks shifted my world considerable.
About 10 years ago I found myself taken over by a continuous stream of thought about all the pain, suffering, and heartache I had ever experienced and all the places in the world reflecting these aspects of life. While the observer in me, well aware of its impact on my health and well being, wanted to shift it, the momentum behind it seemed unstoppable.
At one point a voice within me rose up over the noise and said, " Sing!". That week I joined the Interfaith choir at One Spirit Learning Alliance <http://www.onespiritinterfaith.org/> and in a few short weeks shifted my world considerable.
Singing is a powerful way to shift our minds and influence our creations. The level of intensity found in "big city" environments requires ways that meet the challenges presented by this intensity. Singing mantra is one of the ways that has served me well.
What is the inner soundtrack of your life?
The purpose of spiritual practice is the care of the human body, mind, and spirit and includes the acknowledgment and care of the soul. It is a natural part of daily life and living. It clears metabolic waste from our living energy systems and puts us back into conscious alignment with our natural divinity and connection to Infinite Intelligence at the very core and source of our being.
I have made and continue to make shifts as the layers of "old news" and bad programing purge themselves from my "bodies". It is an ongoing process just as life is an ongoing process. Practices with Earth, Air, Fire, Water, Mind, and Love... Mantra is a Spiritual Practice of Mind and Mindfulness.
On the more traditional path there is a great abundance available to discover about Mantra. But, don't just read about it. The benefit is in the doing; in the practice. Set aside some time each day and give your old thought systems a taste of something divine... Let me know what you discover.
blessings, Peace
I would like to share these wonderful Mantras I came across on facebook at: http://www.facebook.com/LordGanesha
●►Ganesha Mantra●►
Ganesha Mantras are known as Siddhi Mantra the one with perfection. Each and every mantra is full of energy and power of Lord Ganesha. It is believed that mantras of Ganesha, when chanted with genuine devotion, give positive results. These mantras ward off all trials and troubles gracing the devotee with every success.
●►11 Special Ganesha Mantras●►
1. "Aum Shri Ganeshaya Namah":- "Praise to Lord Ganesha". This is the mantra of prayer, love and adoration. It is chanted to get Ganesha's blessings for the positive starting of a project, work or simply to offer him the praise.
2.Aum Gan Ganapatye Namah:-This is Lord Ganesha's mula ("root") mantra .It is also known as his ''beej'' Mantra. This mantra is used for Yoga Sadhana in which we pray to Lord Ganesha and merge ourself with the supreme knowledge and peace. This is a mantra from Ganapati Upanishad. One can always use it before starting any new venture so that success comes without any hassle.
3. "Aum Vakratundaya Hum":-This is a powerful mantra from Ganesha Purana. When things are not in your favour, or when the minds of the people turn negative, depressed or discouraged, the attention of Ganesha may be drawn by this mantra to straighten their ways. The HUM symbolizes "Delay no more, my Lord, in straightening the paths of the crooked-minded ones." This mantra is used many a times in the Ganesha Purana to reduce the violence of cruel demons. In addition, this mantra could also be used for healing any spinal problem, such as curvature of the spine or curved limbs. Dedicate 1,008 repetitions of this holy word to straighten and heal such deficiencies.
4."Aum Kshipra Prasadaya Namah":-Kshipra means immediate. If some danger or negative energy is coming your way and you don't know how to get rid of that danger, with true devotion, practice this mantra for quick blessing and purification of one's aura.
5. "Aum Shrim Hrim Klim Glaum Gam Ganapataye vara varada sarva janamme vashamanaya svaha":-There are several beej (seed) mantras in this mantra. Among other things, it says, "Shower Your blessings, O Lord. I offer my ego as an oblation."
6." Aum Sumukhaya Namah":-This mantra has a lot of meaning, in simple terms, it means you will be always very beautiful in soul, in spirit, in face, everything. By meditating on this mantra, very pleasing manners and a beauty comes on you. Along with that comes peace, which constantly works in your eyes; and the words you speak are all filled with that power of love.
7."Aum Ekadantaya Namah":-Ekadanta refers to one tusk in the elephant face, which means God broke the duality and made you to have a complete one-pointed mind. Whoever has that oneness of mind and single-minded devotion will achieve everything.
6."Aum Kapilaya Namah":-Kapila (red) means that you are able to give colour therapy. You are able to create colours around yourself and around others, soak them in that colour and heal them. As per the mantra you create, so will you create the colors. Another meaning is "wish cow," the "cow of plenty." It means that whatever you wish, that comes true. There is a wish-cow inside you. Whatever you wish, especially for curing others, comes true instantly.
7." Aum Gajakarnikaya Namah":-The ears of Ganesha, the elephant - god, are constant fanning, which means people can talk a lot, but you are not receiving inside anything other than what is important. It also means that you can sit any where and tune this celestial tube (the body) with seven channels (chakras) and all 72,000 nadis, to any loka and be able to hear ancestors, angels, the voice of God or the voice of prophets. That kind of inner ear you will develop through this mantra.
8."Aum Lambodaraya Namah":-This means you feel that you are this universe. It means that all the celestial bodies are within you. Like an entire tree is in the seed, the whole universe is in the sound of creation, which is Aum, and that Aum consciousness in you makes you feel that you are the universe. Therefore, if you say, realizing the oneness with the universe, "shanti to the world" every day, then the grace of God will come and there will be world peace, universal peace. It is the universe within Aum and Aum within you.
9." Aum Bhalachandraya Namah" :- In Sanskrit, bhala means the forehead center. Chandra means the crescent moon. Bhalachandra means that chakra from where the nectar drips. That is the secret of all healing. It is to feel yourself as Shiva, identifying yourself with the Truth and feeling constantly that you are carrying the crescent moon, the symbol of growth and nectar of peace.
10."Aum Vinayakaya Namah" :-Vinayaka is the name of Ganesha in the golden age. So by realizing this mantra, your life will have a golden age. In your office, in your work, you'll be the boss. Vinayaka means something under control. Vinayaka means the Lord of resolving problems.
11."Aum Bhalachandraya Namah":In Sanskrit, bhala means the forehead center. Chandra means the crescent moon. Bhalachandra means that chakra from where the nectar drips. That is the secret of all healing. It is to feel yourself as Shiva, identifying yourself with the Truth and feeling constantly that you are carrying the crescent moon, the symbol of growth and nectar of peace.
Rishikesh, 1968
MAHARISHI: ...senses of action and the prana,
ego, intellect, mind - all this constitutes the subtle
body. And the subtle body has to have the gross
body to work. Eye sight works through eyes.
Sense of hearing works through ears.
This goes out of the body (at the time of death).
And how it goes? The example is of a bee hive,
when the bees leave the bee hive. The process is
that the queen bee flies first. (laughs) And then all
other bees follow the queen bee. And the bee hive
is left, finished.
The queen bee is the prana, and it comes out
and then it is followed by all these mind, intellect,
senses and all that. This is how the subtle body
leaves the gross body and goes to a field where
the last desire at the time of death will bemost
easily fulfilled. You follow the point?
Whatever is the last desire, it doesn't matter -
the last desire promotes theprana to come out.
And prana comes out, but it gets a direction
through that momentum of the desire.
This way and this way and this way. And it goes
and goes and goes.
Wherever the last desire is, for whatever thing,
that is the direction of the - we call it soul, not
that Being soul, but the subtle body. It goes
motivated by the last desire and goes to a field
where that desire will be most easily fulfilled.
This is the passage of rebirth. ...to that family,
to that mother. In the womb of that mother, like that.
In whatever family one is born, he is born
there just because that field is most conducive
to the last desire which carries with it the sum
total of the karma of the past life. Innumerable karmas
and all the bundle of karma. And all the bundle of
karma goes all around the central point of thelast desire.
Last desire takes him to that field.
Maybe someone is to be born in the ex-family,
mother. Now, whether he is to be born blind or
deaf or what, this will be brought about by the
total influence of the karma. All innumerable
karmas. And the collective influence of the karmas
will provide him with the machinery.
Whether one is born completely bright and
brilliant or dull or this, whatever, that is the
sum total of the karma, influence of all the
karma. But the birth is due to the last desire,see?
Someone who dies, thinking of his cat, dear cat -
he is going to be born as a cat. (laughter) Whether
he will be born as a cat on the street or as a cat in a
palace, that will be brought about by the influence
of the influence of the total karma. (laughs)
But cat he must become. Because the last desire was
"Now who will feed this dear cat. I am going now,
who will take care of it?" And that's it. That much
is enough to make him born as a cat. But what kind
of cat, where, how much happier or how much
miserable (laughs), that total karma will
decide about the kind of cat...
MAHARISHI: ...senses of action and the prana,
ego, intellect, mind - all this constitutes the subtle
body. And the subtle body has to have the gross
body to work. Eye sight works through eyes.
Sense of hearing works through ears.
This goes out of the body (at the time of death).
And how it goes? The example is of a bee hive,
when the bees leave the bee hive. The process is
that the queen bee flies first. (laughs) And then all
other bees follow the queen bee. And the bee hive
is left, finished.
The queen bee is the prana, and it comes out
and then it is followed by all these mind, intellect,
senses and all that. This is how the subtle body
leaves the gross body and goes to a field where
the last desire at the time of death will bemost
easily fulfilled. You follow the point?
Whatever is the last desire, it doesn't matter -
the last desire promotes theprana to come out.
And prana comes out, but it gets a direction
through that momentum of the desire.
This way and this way and this way. And it goes
and goes and goes.
Wherever the last desire is, for whatever thing,
that is the direction of the - we call it soul, not
that Being soul, but the subtle body. It goes
motivated by the last desire and goes to a field
where that desire will be most easily fulfilled.
This is the passage of rebirth. ...to that family,
to that mother. In the womb of that mother, like that.
In whatever family one is born, he is born
there just because that field is most conducive
to the last desire which carries with it the sum
total of the karma of the past life. Innumerable karmas
and all the bundle of karma. And all the bundle of
karma goes all around the central point of thelast desire.
Last desire takes him to that field.
Maybe someone is to be born in the ex-family,
mother. Now, whether he is to be born blind or
deaf or what, this will be brought about by the
total influence of the karma. All innumerable
karmas. And the collective influence of the karmas
will provide him with the machinery.
Whether one is born completely bright and
brilliant or dull or this, whatever, that is the
sum total of the karma, influence of all the
karma. But the birth is due to the last desire,see?
Someone who dies, thinking of his cat, dear cat -
he is going to be born as a cat. (laughter) Whether
he will be born as a cat on the street or as a cat in a
palace, that will be brought about by the influence
of the influence of the total karma. (laughs)
But cat he must become. Because the last desire was
"Now who will feed this dear cat. I am going now,
who will take care of it?" And that's it. That much
is enough to make him born as a cat. But what kind
of cat, where, how much happier or how much
miserable (laughs), that total karma will
decide about the kind of cat...
This is how far concepts can get you.
Dim lights
Even Freud said that "Sometimes a cigar is just a good smoke."
Dim lights
Even Freud said that "Sometimes a cigar is just a good smoke."
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