Reborn

Reborn

Dementia happens because people don’t allow for being reborn!

For those who are really good at doing the thing they have always done, …be careful. Sometimes you need to get to the new thing.

Sometimes being certain and proficient at something can be a burden that leads to dullness, and sameness, sickness and boredom. Be careful of that. It is telling you about the need to move into the newness of your newly minted being.

Now this doesn’t mean you aught to leave your work, or partner or house.. although, it might. Rather it means that the need to blow some fresh air into your circumstances has come up again.

Go explore how to regain the newness of life. IF you’re lucky, life will throw you around enough to keep presenting you with new stuff. Perhaps this is a good thing, something to embrace, something not to be overly dismayed at. Could be good.

Go with the flow, check out the new, be in the present moment of now, resign yourself to your fate… for awhile. Who knows what might come up. Could be good.

Paul

In our early years ...

We, in our early years developed a way of being that we strove to maintain all through our lives as it approximated life as we know it best. It was that crucial moment we awoke to the knowing that we were alive. That supreme moment of consciousness.

Should this transcendent awakening to our  being alive, be somewhat negative and fearful, this too regardless, will be something we will strive continuously to maintain. As to maintain it is to give us life.

We will in our imaginations, dreams, and perceptions,  find situations that provide the impetus of this old beingness. We will find partners, interests, political and religious feeling that will help us feel like we have always.

Our sicknesses and conditions are there for that same reason of replicating our measure of beingness in perhaps,  that fearful, uncertain way. In fact it is sickness and injury that should all other elements fail to prompt the fear and blackness of old, come to the fore and give us as a great gift, the exact measure of that old black magic of our early years. Consciousness of life.

A sense of separateness, aloneness, desperation, hopelessness, and blackness make up strangely, the only life we knew and we mightily cling to it. It is strange that we do so, but we do, and sickness, illness and injury are powerful magnets of that old felt sensed life.

Life in whatever form, is life and the one we attempt to recreate endlessly. It is our oxygen, our sustenance, our life, and It forms the very energy of our mind so as to give us  our life that certain way, over and over. It’s the function of this thought system to provide what we ultimately want, … the continuation of who we once consciously found ourselves to be.

OF course we really don’t want the trouble and strife. It’s often painful and troublesome, yet we are compelled by it, because we want to live and feel the livingness we discovered,  way back then.

And so all the big diseases, all the world’s plagues of deep unrest, might be seen in this light. What if we changed that sense of life from what we had, to what might be more suitable today. Giving up the old, to embrace the new.   

What if we obtained a new consciousness of what it is to be alive, would we want to continue to recreate that wonderful moment of life?

When science first discovered how organic life started on Earth, a mixture of the right elements, heat, Oxygen, and electricity, they with some success, concocted  life from that recipe and new life was started from scratch. Amazing.

We who once a long time ago, awoke to our own life, also concoct  that same experiment with the same recipe of elements that existed way back in our lives. Also amazing.

 But today we may begin to understand that life can be brought forth using altogether different elements, and conditions from the ones we once knew. We can and must, make this experiment. Consciousness of a life  newly created, in a very different way, will heal us all.

Paul

This limitation on thinking reveals ...

Academia has it’s own rigorous exacting standards that are upheld by qualified scholars with letters after their name . “Do not pronounce on subjects that you know nothing about.”  But is this a disservice to thinkers?

This limitation on thinking reveals, at least to me, a certain flaw. The requirement to have studied and become knowledgeable on a subject, discounts  intuitive, insightful or just speculative thought.

Does it means that only thought, extending from previous study is the best truth we have? And does it mean that  thought without “the Knowledge” is not true?

And further, does it mean that thought built on what came before, is free from distortion, and not locked within a certain previous framework. Certainly in Science, almost no advance, comes from any direct line of previous enquiry.

In Science, the idea to be free of a past understanding of a thing,  is known to be a requirement for discovery. The past in Science is almost always, a block to the future. A good Scientist needs to suspend what they know, so as to see with new eyes.

Yet in Science as with Academia, the past and it’s relevancies are often solidly equated as  truth and law. If  thought  differs from the norm, it is judged  against, and penalised.

I believe that it is a mark of great wisdom, to listen to those fresh imaginative minds, with an ear for fresh discovery and the next round of truth making.

Paul

What makes sense?

What makes sense?

Does anyone know. Last night I slept badly. I dreamt that I was running in France, and getting more lost by the minute. But sleep was continually broken by these kind of dreams, which became so agitating that I had to wake out of it. I went shopping the day before to find an elusive item and was running and had no success. Why did my dream copy my day?

Why can peace come and go regardless of circumstances. Why is there always drama and trauma. In families where you don’t expect it to happen. To people whose lives provide  good education for their young, and yet trouble brews. Why? Anyone got an answer.

Today I was with a man who has to make a difficult decision about aged care and even though money isn’t really a concern, and they are very bright people who have planned assiduously  for the later years, yet it’s all going wrong.

It seems that the play of melodrama has no end. You can meditate until your bum  becomes numb. You can read every spiritual message ever written, go into seclusion, and yet peace, sweet peace seems to be this vague butterfly thing that lands on your shoulder or not. Why is this?

Why is the speed of disruption and interruption so profound. Why, why, why?

History shows that the speed of life has always been busy. Doesn’t matter if you lived in a African tribe, Chinese Village, or New York, peace always seems to be that rare elusive thing. Easier to find the missing link between humans and apes. Why? [ he asks without expecting an answer.]

Anyway to find peace in the middle of a storm is perhaps all we truly have.

Maybe that’s why drugs and alcohol are so popular. Temporary relief from the drama, that doesn’t change. I leave it here for now, struggling myself with a peace that seems to be hauntingly close, and yet devastatingly far away.

Peace be with you, and good luck with that.

Paul

I’m looking forward to now!

I’m looking forward to now!

We had a big day. From the time the sun went up, we were actively involved with people and things. Lots of drama, intrigue, lots of stuff to work out. Investigations and purchases. Banking conundrums and computers, dogs, and food.

Never a chance to sit down and enjoy a period of quiet rest and peace. Not a sausage of it. Phones rings, texts being sent ….ever had a day like this. In the end Juni said “I’m looking forward to now!”

Don’t you just love it. It’s funny. How can you look forward to now. Which is now, not later. But it says it perfectly. And it got me thinking about now and then and anticipation, intention and all the rest of it.

How do you get to now and then stay a lot longer. Does one side of the brain do it better than the other, and which one and how do you activate that side. What is now anyway? All that stuff.

Still, I am looking forward to now. Really, truly.

Paul

How to Avoid the Perils of Atraction

“I like who I am when I am with you”.

Such a small sentence that can mean so much. Years ago I was married to a women…nothing abnormal about that, who was, said friends, very much like my mother. I couldn’t see it. Both women were unlike each other in just about every way possible, yet friends persisted in seeing the similarities.

They were right of course. In fact as a rule of thumb, all of us tend towards mates that are in a certain way, like a parent. Boys are attracted to women who are like their moms. Girls to their dads.

Yet when you look to see what others might be telling you, it fails to be seen. It’s because we are looking at the wrong things. IF we look instead at who we are when we are with our mate, the comparison to a parent becomes clearer.

No longer looking for physical or character traits in other possible mates, but rather looking in at ourselves in the company of these significant relationships, it becomes possible that our character and emotional and behavioural traits can become observable.

It’s still not at all easy, but looking in the right direction is a big first step. Do we choose our friends because of who they are or that we like how we feel, or think or who we are being, when we are with them?

I believe that no matter who we were, in the company of our parents, and by this I mean, how we felt, thought, behaved, created. Also the kind of things in our hearts and on our minds, all of it makes for a kind of desired continuance of self.

We want to have the same childhood us-ness in our adult relationships. And we will be attracted to people who unwittingly provide that. The attraction to another contains some interesting features.

Firstly in being highly attracted to a possible partner, there often won’t be any similarity in physical appearance to parents, nor emotional, spiritual, or any other signs of parental likeness. They will seem unlike  your parents.

 So if  life at home was unpleasant and you make the important attempt to live a better life, it might seem right that your partner is different. Yet all the looking at your potential mate is the wrong place to look.

While all the looking at who you are being, while you are with your attractive partner will tell you the story you are looking for. What are your thoughts while with this potential mate? What are you feeling, creating, intuiting. What are your fear or freedom levels.

 And the biggie….are these things very much like they were with your opposite sex parent. You know, if your mate is male, are you like you were with your dad, and if female, are you like you were with your mom.

This isn’t a moral thing. There is neither good or bad in this view, rather the likelihood, that how you were as a small person living at home years ago with your mom and dad, and step parents too, is quite likely about to repeat itself.

Attraction to others is that powerful. It contains the seeds of continuance. That’s what it’s for of course. When home and village life is good, that life perpetuates itself. When the life is bad, that too perpetuates itself. It’s all in attraction.

It’s clear enough that the idea that history repeats itself is true enough. Usually though, this little idea is used to speak of war and the stupidity of nations, but it also tells of the children of alcoholics and abusers finding themselves in alcoholic and abusive relationships, time and time again.

It also tells of children of happy creative humour filled homes finding via the power of attraction, mates that allow for happy creative humour filled lives in adult life.

So if any of this goes BING for you, what if anything can you do?

Choice is often talked about, but unless there is awareness, no choice is really possible and you are destined to repeat history.

My advice when trying to break with the past, trying not to have a present like the one at home as a child…is this. Go against the type of person you are usually attracted to. What you are attempting to do is find out how you are when you are with them. Are there similarities to how you were when you were with your mom if you are male, or dad if you are female. That will start to tell you about the past possibly repeating.

OF course if you are wanting history to repeat, the same procedure can be used to see if how you are being now, when with this possible mate, compared with how you were with that parent. Similarities of behaviour, feeling, thrill, fear and freedom, thought, positive and negativity. All this kind of thing can tell you heaps.

All in all attraction, attracts the good, the bad, and the ugly. All without you knowing what your getting yourself into. But you can discover, uncover and recover. Here’s a story you can learn, one which has been there all along, just waiting to be told, if you are bold enough.

Paul

How should we live?

How should we live?

Most religions are concerned with this question. Some are more interested in the God question and our relationship with the all mighty. But I’m interested in how we should live, because it seems to me that how we should live is still being questioned.

We have lots of laws, rules, codes of conduct and moral and ethical standards. We have our version of right and wrong. Lots of dusty old books full of other people’s wisdom, who in their time, tackled the same question.

Every nation on Earth has variations on how should we live, and by and by, we disagree, argue and go to war over what should be an easy answer to an easy question. In fact the idea that we don’t know, raises questions. How come we don’t intrinsically know?

Interestingly, once some people have written down the codes of conduct and of law, the question changes to how do we get people to follow how we should live, as we have determined.

I’ve never done a survey of all the world’s laws and codes of conduct, but I wonder if there are a lot of similarities. Things like mercantile practices, how do we conduct ourselves in business, relationships, marriage, religious observance and the love of music and food.

Are we all, very much the same, and why then are we always wanting to get the bottom of that question…”how should we live?” if we are all living very much the same???

As babies, we don’t understand anything. And as we grow, we learn the meanings of things, and we want to start putting all these meanings of things together in a way that makes our life make sense. And it doesn’t work terribly well. Lots of what we know is contradictory.

So the sum total of all that we know just confuses us,  leaving us to ask yet again, “how we should live?”

Paul

To be or not to be - maybe

To be or not to be

Living on this planet compared to living in the Astral has been the subject of many a book. Mostly books on the Astral talk about how terrific it is to be dead and finding themselves in this wonderful paradise. These folk always talk about how being freed of their human bodies allows them to be, and to be connected to all life in such wondrous  bliss.

And it made me wonder why anyone would want to reincarnate. After all, here life is hard, the sense of oneness & peace is not often felt and fear is ever present. So why would anyone want to replace a joyous paradise with Earth?

This bloody question has plagued me for about forever, and often I get some book or insight that satisfies me for awhile and then I’m right back where  started, why does anyone come back. Why does anyone want to be here?

Well, here’s the latest in a long line of answers. In the Astral, there exists quite naturally “being-ness”. And this is felt as soon as you arrive. Everything and everyone you meet is felt as part of you. You seem to exist within a oneness with everything while also maintaining your you-ness. With me so far.

But what you can’t have up there is “having-ness. You can’t feel any kind of possession. There is no sense of ownership. Nothing is just yours because as I have said, the all belongs to all, so ownership can’t become personal.

But on Earth it can. Here you can experience having and not having, possession and ownership. Wanting to have, struggling to have. Loss and desire to have. Up there, however, all there is of this, is a vague sense of these “having” things being possible somehow.

 A little science now. Science is the exploration of the familiar, and finding the next big thing. Since everything is related to something else, [go speak to Einstein]. Knowing some things, always leads to knowing something else.

 Like the simple equation  1 + 1 =

 1+1 are numbers that are related by the “+”, so we that it must lead us to something on the other side of the “=”. Or take for instance, 2 sides of a triangle. We might know that there is a 3^rd  side,  but not how big. But because all the sides are related, we can figure out what it might be.

This is how life is for us everywhere, even in the Astral. Up there where being-ness reins supreme, there is also a dim knowing of what else might be = Having.

There is also a knowing that having “having” in the Astral is not really possible, but is on Earth. It explains why people want to come back here, again and again. They want to muck about with what  possessing and ownership is like.

Now I know that the idea of the Astral, and an afterlife, and reincarnation is something that is not readily agreeable to a lot of people, and as such, just about everything I’ve said about being and having  might be dismissed. I hope not. It was well meant. I think I’m on to something here … at least until the next great idea comes along.

Paul

The Truth About Getting Angry

Anger

W hat can be done about anger?

I mean anger is one of those unstoppable things. A  lot like falling. You fall and you will keep falling until you and the ground meet. And you,  always come off second best.

But I want to be able to curb my anger long before I catch the concrete. So can it be done? There are of course,  lots of techniques out there that are supposed to work, and I’ll go through one of them. One I like is based on NLP. It uses classical conditioning, like Pavlov’s dog. But before we get to that, there are some other things going on that seem to stand in the way of any kind of “way” to curb anger.

There is the clear notion that I like the feeling. There is more than that though. Anger can be a kind of relief, and a wild joy.  Mostly though, it feels right to get angry at something or someone .  Anger is primarily metered out, to stop bad things .

It’s a punishing  sentence, handed down to stop a perceived crime. Last night I got really hot and bothered about “too many bloody commercials” during a really good TV show. And I jumped up and down and almost hurled something at the offending thing. With a sort of “That will teach you as lesson” feel to it.

So you see, being angry almost always seems like the right thing to do, as it gives a sense that it will stop bad things…or at least bad things happening to you. That’s of course  the problem. Only you get punished. Anger negatively affects your body and your very sanity.

Firstly, the only person who understands that there is a lesson to teach “don’t do that again”, is you . Everyone else just thinks, you’ve gone mad … again. No one else but you,  has a clue that there is good intention behind all this excess angry energy. The only lesson you actually teach is, that it’s a good idea to steer clear from this raving lunatic.

So you see, the primary reason for anger is fundamentally pointless. Which is a shame, cause it feels so right, so justifiable. So therefore…I like the “therefore’s”.  They make any statement seem so unquestionably valid. But it’s just a  “therefore”, none the less.

Anyway if you can pierce through this Anger misconception, you can begin to rein it in. You might be more willing, because to you,  it’s function is now in doubt.

From here, learning ways of not being so bloody minded is, while not at all easy, certainly some what easier. And so we come to technique. I like techie stuff.

As anger floods you, you won’t be able to think your way out. Anger blocks out the Brain’s thinking capacities, so you’ll need a kind of button that when pressed, reverses anger.

To do this, you will need to establish a button. If you are right handed, you want to bring the thumb and the first two fingers of your left hand together. Reversed for lefties.

The second thing is to do a spot of imagining. A scene where you are at peace, happy and active..like a party!

As you imagine that peaceful and happy  scene and are really digging it. The feeling part is all important, by the way. It really is the only part we are interested in, in the end. And so as you are really digging the  party, and enjoying the peace and happiness there, make all those  fingers come together. The thumb and the  next 2 fingers. Hold for about 5 seconds.

Do that scene with the diggy feeling and the thumb/2 fingers button connected thing a lot. Over a month, do it everyday. Remember that we are attempting to overcome a very old and powerful habit. Yes, Anger is a habit. Doesn’t that make you mad!

Now for the fun part. Imagine something that makes you angry.  As you collapse together that 3 finger button, you’ll  find that your anger slows and even reverses. You have linked feelings of happiness and a purely physical thing, the 3 fingers. It’s a powerful new habit.

Your next habit is to use your new button. Sometimes to reverse anger and sometimes just to boost a sense of happiness.

Anger is ok, but uncontrolled, is a dangerous thing. Mostly misunderstood, and mostly a waste of bloody time. Anger is a power house of energy that can be hugely valuable or destructive, like atomic power, it can detonate, or it can light up an entire city.

Paul

A Course in MIracles

The other day I gave a 20 minute talk on A Course in Miracles and because it was a short talk, I thought I'd put it in my blogg.
It all started with Helen Schucmann and a psychologist colleague who when trying to organise a new University course came up against all sorts of conflicts among the people also trying to set up this specialty course. And they said .."there must be a better way" Almost in answer to this question came ACIM.

Helen wrote down every word of all of the course that she heard coming into her mind, from a source she felt was in some way, divine. If she refused to write the words down, the source would wait until she would be ready and continue from where she had left off. In this way, ACIM took seven years to write, and another five to get in into book form.

Here briefly then is the course;
There are only  two thought systems
The Ego's thought system and it is based on Fear
The Holy Spirit's thought system and it is based on Love
[For those who feel uncomfortable with terms like Holy spirit, substitute Universal Mind, or Oneness. It's just a way of talking. ACIM is not religiously based. It is a spiritual work that goes right to the heart of love., compassion and unity]

Here then are the two thought systems compared;

The Ego excludes, always separating, dividing
The Holy spirit always is inclusive, showing oneness

The Ego judges and divides
The The Holy spirit forgives and embraces

The Ego shows only scarcity
The The Holy spirit Provides plenty

The Ego shows the illusion of truth
The The Holy spirit demonstrates truth

ACIM's purpose is to provide you with the ability to see the difference between seeing only fear and seeing only love, so a choice can be made. Choice makes only sense when you are aware that there is choice.

Lack of choice is like not knowing that the nightmare of last night was a dream and is finished. The Ego's thought system makes no distinction between night and day mares that seem grindingly continuous. With the Ego, there is no waking up. ACIM''s great contribution to sanity is that it helps you to wake from dreams of fear and despair, and into the light.

ACIM's is a very big book, and my simplification as left out much truth. There is much about ACIM on the net and other books that provide an easier introduction as well. ACIM is divided into 3 books, now all published together as one. The middle book is the practical, hands on experiential one. It takes a minimum of a year to complete.But I think a year to wake from unending nightmares, is no hardship.
Paul

Prove it!

In the 18^th century, a bunch of interested people got together in Copenhagen to figure out the meaning and purpose of Science. They had all dimly realised that a new way of looking at the world had emerged, but needed to talk to each other to figure that out.

The problem was this; they had started to use experimentation on things, and were getting results that were different from the usual philosophical, political and religious ones. As a result they needed to know how or even what, this all meant. Had they found new truth?

The emerging ideas were not fitting into accepted forms of thinking. Indeed up to then, philosophic and religious thinking was all there was, and to go against that was a kind of blasphemy. So you can understand that these new thinkers needed to form a guild for strength support, and respect.

They called themselves Scientists. And they decided to be only interested in the material things that would yield to experimentation, and leave the rest to philosophy and religion and so forth. All to the good, and yet a weird thing has happened in the ensuing years, and it is this…,

Anything today that cannot be scientifically proven, is considered not to be true or even real. It was never meant that way. In fact quite the opposite.

Scientists understood that they, with their emerging techno tools of scientific investigation, could only work on things where the method worked. Science never sought to negate the realness of things, because of testing problems.

Today people think that if a thing can’t be scientifically experimented on, it must therefore be proof of its falseness. And this is one of the greatest falsehoods of all time.

Science has to limit it’s view to what it can see. But now, we use that partial blindness offensively, like a person who is long and short sighted, declaiming …”If I can’t see it, it doesn’t exist”. Utter madness.

So if someone says to you….Prove it, tell em to stop being silly and get scientific. Tell them that scientific validation of the truth of things is terrific, but limited to the kind of things that can be experimented on…and not one drop more.

Paul

IS this weird or not?

Is this weird or what?

Here’s something I just read from a quote of Richard feynman – The value of science,  that’s just plain weird!

“It means the atoms that are in the brain are being replaced: the ones that were there before have gone away.
So what is this mind of ours: what are these atoms with consciousness? Last week's potatoes! They now can remember what was going on in my mind a year ago—a mind which has long ago been replaced. To note that the thing I call my individuality is only a pattern or dance, that is what it means when one discovers how long it takes for the atoms of the brain to be replaced by other atoms. The atoms come into my brain, dance a dance, and then go out—there are always new atoms, but always doing the same dance, remembering what the dance was yesterday.”

Atoms in your brain are being replaced by other atoms. We know that at a larger scale, cells -  [larger groupings of atoms], are being replaced continuously in the body. Some even say that every 7 years, you own a totally new body. Amazing!

At the level of atoms, we know that they come together and share atomic space and electrons. So that connected atoms might consist almost entirely of electrons of just one atom bouncing around, keeping both of them going. weird.

So particles[electrons] move in and out of each other. This must mean that any atom’s constituency is in a constant state of flux. So that an atom is made up of individual particles that come and go from all over the place. They pop in this atom and then take a little holiday to another one. Weird.

The upshot of this is that our brain and body, that chair, that car, that hamburger, is not a fixed thing. Every last atomic particle of it goes in and out, and other particles from elsewhere, take their place. A swirling bubbling, burping, flowing soup, rather than a stolid solid rock of a thing, which is all we ever see. Weird.

 You are at this very moment, a completely different set of matter than you were a microscopic fraction of a second ago, yet you have stayed the same person. Even weirder!

Paul...weirded out!