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!

Ghost in the machine

With Newton, the idea of the Universe as a machine with consistent physical forces driving it all along meant that observation and consciousness played no part. It became the single most powerful notion for the 20^th Century.

It means though that for Quantum Physics, Genetics, chemistry, economics, sociology, science and research generally, a mechanistic physical world view still holds as the only truth.

Recently there was a documentary on Chaos theory, in which the Mandelbrot set was offered as a supreme example of the hidden but orderly physical forces operating in chaos.

 It seems that with only 2 or 3 mathematical mutating rules, most of the cosmos can be explained. But explained mechanistically, with no regard to free will, God, consciousness, or anything outside the physical realm.

However Quantum Physics, even in it’s purely experimental form, shows repeatedly that consciousness is an integral part of what happens inside atoms. Again....Consciousness moves things!

Yet the scientists involved won’t recognise this amazing aspect. They even have a saying.. ”Shut up and calculate”. Their maths are part of the deterministic approach of science that must prove the existence of certain physical qualities, and will ignore the mystery because science doesn’t concern itself with “Philosophy”.

This idea comes from a  time about 100 years ago when science was changing, and at a conference in Copenhagen scientists had to decide what they did for as living. What made them scientists.

They decided that science should only focus on what can be physically determined. Everything else should not be in the province of science because all they would have, as in the past, is argument, speculation, and philosophy and no fixed concrete answer.

Strangely though, this scientific determinism has been turned upside down, so that all things not capable of being scientifically determined are derided as being….get this…”Not scientific”!

Quantum Physics is still hamstrung with this thinking and only the very bravest of scientists, will talk about what actually goes on in the lab, In All Quantum verifying experiments ….IN ALL OF THEM,  consciousness and observation are a unavoidable facts of the quantum physics. What you are thinking about, has a direct impact on the experiment.

Why hasn’t this been a big bang moment hailed by science? It certainly has by everyone else, and science has been ignoring it all the way. Newton has a lot to answer for.

Paul

Meaningful Pairs

We give everything  the meaning it has for us. Quoted from “A Course in Miracles”

Every little thing from a chair to a marriage has personal meaning. But it’s sometimes it’s really hard to know exactly what you think. What do you think about a chair for instance….H’mm?  Something to sit on perhaps…anything else?

But try this…Drag that soft low slung lazy boy wing backed chair to the kitchen table, and all of a sudden it means a lot more than that. Wrong chair, that’s for sure. Perhaps wrong in many odd mismatched ways. It talks of design and personal preference. What about inviting someone like the boss to the table with the wrong chair there and maybe there is embarrassment or anger or laughter, or even a sense of cool or maybe shame, who knows?

This matching pair exercise though, will tell you a lot about what you think about chairs. Mostly about stuff you didn’t even know you cared about. And this is just about chairs!

Now you can decide if the many things you have had thoughts about for years, are just old worn out records in need of replacing .

Here are some more meanings to explore. No more chairs though!

How about Money.

Do Aggression and money work together

Does Peace and money

Does Business and money work together

And does Philosophy and business

Yet again another “For instance”.  if I asked you what aging meant to you, you’d think you’d know wouldn’t you. But do you?

It would be interesting to do the exercise of matching age and a wheelchair, Age and sex, Age and business, Age and aggression, Age and politics…and so on.  Do you think what Age means, might come out different?

These examples are but the tip of a very large submerged iceberg. A personally made hidden iceberg of meanings about how life works.

Most of what we think remains hidden through most of our lives. Sometimes our most deeply felt experiences come as a complete surprise to us. Without any element of control. The Meaningful Pairs

exercise can open you up to your personal  pile of prejudice, choice, beliefs, preferences and reactions. Could be a good thing…no?

Paul