“Spirituality”

A little while ago I met a woman who’d put up a store in town with spiritual things. She did Reiki and Tarot readings, and sold books and crystal balls and such. (I said “did” because the store closed soon.)
She is really quite bright, and highly perceptive.
I signed up for a course studying some of those things, with a group of other customers. If nothing else it was a good way of getting out and meeting more people. And it was fun. Although I did not have much talent for most of it.

But I’m realising that it really does not have much at all to do with real Spirituality. Spirit is not fortune telling or contacting ghosts. Spirit is outside the universe. You have spirit once you have fully contacted your emotional reasons for hanging onto this illusory world.

What is normally seen as “spirituality”, just like religion, science, and most other things, is simply just one more way of trying to control this chaotic world we find ourselves in. It is not really a way towards Awakening or Liberation.

Also, I found that most of the people who were there were just terrified of... everything. Ghosts, evil influences, etc. Even the teacher, who was clearly quite powerful, spent half her time protecting herself against all kinds of things. If she forgot, apparently she got badly hurt by ghosts and such all the time, even physically. Fear, fear, fear, always ruling this dream.

By the way, it’s not that I don’t think it’s real. The Oija board clearly worked. We got clear answers from some of the presences, and there was no way any of us could have controlled the glass.

Wild waters

I think some of us are not happy unless we are swimming always by the most direct route we can, even if the sea gets so wild we are almost drowning.

 “Your special loves are simply idols in which you seek to get what you feel is lacking in yourself. Romance is a vain attempt to fill an imagined emptiness—a hole that doesn’t really exist, but that you experience as a result of the separation. That sense of lack can really only be healed by the Atonement and salvation, leading you to the wholeness of your oneness with God.”

- The Disappearance Of The Universe

Any love for somebody or something, above other persons or creatures or things, is of the ego, not Source.

Snow’s Story one

Snow’s Story
 by Eolake Stobblehouse 

The universe is an awakening machine, designed to take us from near-unconsciousness back to reunion with Source, or God.

 Everything, “good” or “bad”, that we do or experience, is part of this process.

 And we are now far closer to the end than to the beginning.

More on fear

Fear is a colossal presence in our lives. In fact the whole universe is based on it, and designed to handle it. When the last drop of fear has been faced, we can see that we are with God.

Rational and kind people often think “why do people...!?” And the answer is usually simply, Fear.

Don’t resist, only un-believe

I just had a great realisation: the reason why the Course is only about Thought, not about Action...

 ... is because the point is NOT to RESIST the ego, it is to UN-BELIEVE the ego!

 In fact if you resist the ego too much, you may just reinforce your belief in it.

 The point is just to observe it as it’s happening, and watch the absurdity of it, thus gradually stopping believing in it.

What Self wants

- You have exactly what you want. But it is possible to be confused about what one wants. -

 Funny, I thought this was a pretty precise ACIM quote, but I don’t find it by search engine. Anyway, I believe it, and I’ve been thinking about it recently, because I’ve become more and more, and viscerally, aware of how much my Self loves and desires suffering. And by that it’s clear that I won’t be free so long as I still have that idiotic belief, and that I *will* be free once that belief is fully released.

Seeing this world for realsies

These days I’m a student of non-duality (nondualism). I believe that only one thing, god and ourselves, are real, nothing else is, including the physical world. It does not exist. And what is real is one thing, no divisions.

I actually got my first perception of it almost twenty years before I had even heard of the concept. I remember being at home and thinking about what it was I really really wanted.

I got the perception that what I wanted was... A Sort Of Warmth. I’m sure it’s the same as some call Love, some call Spirit, some call... so many things. I had always found it in beauty and art.

That day I looked for it in my mind’s eye in all of the universe, and I saw and felt that nothing there was it, and that nothing I looked for was even... solid. It did not feel real to me. It was not real.

But I could feel that this warmth was real, it was there somewhere, and I continued my quest for it.

Some call it God, some call it Infinity, some call it The Universe. I believe now what I’m taught, that one can gradually shift one’s attention from The World Of Form to The World Of God or Love, and eventually one will arrive there.

Eolake uplifting dreams

I had some trouble (Google is acting up on me, not showing posts half the time, very odd) finding my old favorite posts about uplifting dreams I've had. So I have collected them into one document, and I'm reposting them all in one post here:

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Lucid dreaming

"All your time is spent in dreaming. Your sleeping and your waking dreams have different forms, and that is all. Their content is the same."
T-18.II.5:12-14

I had an amazing experience the other night. I'm not sure if it will seem extraordinary to anybody else, but to me it really was.

I was dreaming in the night, and it was just about walking around in my old home town with some friends and having various experiences. But it was parts of the town I had not seen before, and since I know every inch of it, I knew it was not real.

Whether for that reason for inspiration, I became aware that I was dreaming. And I became aware that I might wake up, but not necessarily immediately, and it did not matter.

The really amazing thing, though, was that the dream and everything in it was astoundingly detailed. It was every bit as detailed as what I see in "reality" every day. Perhaps even more, I think my eyesight was better in the dream.

It was a fantastic experience to walk around in this world which I knew was a dream, and yet it continued, and yet it was fully as detailed and real-looking as anything I'd ever seen.

It might not be proof that "reality" is actually a dream. I don't know if that can be "proved". But it can't be proved that it's real either. Any proof you need to prove that it's real, you can also dream up!

But it did prove to my personal satisfaction that a dream can seem at least as real and detailed as what we call reality, and therefore there's no reason, apart from emotional necessity, to assume that reality is not a dream.

===
A colorful dream

I had another lucid dream. Like the first one, it was totally real and detailed to me, and I was aware, much of the time, that I was dreaming.

But it lasted much longer. And it was so pleasant and big and beautiful. Everything in it (like architecture) was beautiful, and richly colorful, and interesting, and the people were friendly, I met old friends and made new ones.

It was just like a taste of how much better The Dream can become without the Fear and Guilt. (While surely being not a patch on Reality and Heaven.)

Just one detail, the colors, were amazing enough. I don't often dream enough colors to notice it, but this was just like... a genius painter's version of the world.

Also for a while there I could decide myself where to go in the cityscape (near the sea). I knew I was exploring a dreamed reality, and I was aware that it was shown to me for a reason.

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Dream of a house

I dreamed that I moved into a room in a big, old house. (From 19 til 36 I lived in a succession of rented rooms, since I didn't care to spare the attention or money yet to get a real home, I was too busy with my spiritual development.)

The house was really huge, and it was in a city. It had many floors, and lots and lots and lots of interconnected room and stairs and halls and spaces. For some reason it had been built with very uneven floors, some dramatically slanted, especially high in the house. Very eccentric, and very interesting and pleasing, and solid.

It turned out many of my old friends lived there already. Some even from back in school.

I walked around and up and down, it was evening, and I saw people/friends occupied with doing the dishes and such. Everything was open, I saw no closed doors. I thought I'd love to hang out here, but right this moment I was too excited to sit down, I wanted to see everything at once.

After I woke up I was in an odd but highly pleasant glow, an intense high that lasted for hours. This was just fantastic.
(I've had that a couple of times before, one of them after self-therapy. If I could get it in pills I'd be rich. And hooked :-)  .)

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A dream of odd coffee

Dream:
In a coffeehouse in a free-standing old stone building in central Copenhagen (as usual bearing no resemblance at all to the Copenhagen I'm used to). Colored painted walls and hardwood floors.

I had a cup of coffee, probably café au lait, which somehow was made in relation to the philosophy of an old dead philosopher. Who was also there.

The coffee had the odd property that while I drank it, and only while actually sipping it, all curved lines in my sight turned to straight lines. Circles, like the top of the cup, turned to octagons...

I did it many times. It was most extraordinary, and I have no idea what it means, if anything!

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Another train dream

(I don't know why I often dream about traveling around in complex train systems.)

I dreamed that I was on a train in the local train system in/around Copenhagen, with a couple old friends.
An area we were going to was nicknamed "Tivoli", according to the train station map. I did not know why, but I found out. (Tivoli is a venerable Copenhagen amusement park.)
Once out there, it happened that the train went into a tunnel, and then went downwards. Like 45 degrees downwards!
While hanging on for dear life, I asked my friends what the hell is this, and they said "have you never been in this area before?", and I said "apparently not by train!"

It went down like a roller coaster, except it went on and on and on and on, with gut-wrenching speed.
I thought, "how and when did Danish Rail have the time and money to build this??!"

It was absolutely, spectacularly terrifying. After I woke up, I had remnants of that fear for over an hour. (Yet it was not all that unpleasant, oddly.)

Then later it leveled out, and soon we came to a station. I ogled a beautiful woman getting off, and then we got off ourselves. I said that I knew the guy in the video store in this town, and we could do some kind of business with him.

When we went out of the station, the stars were out and the birds were singing. Even though the train had never turned upwards again, we were outdoors.

I thought about it a lot after waking, and I'm guessing I can learn that you can be afraid for no reason at all. And that even if it feels like you sometimes go down, there really are no levels.

===
I had a dream this night:
I saw a big manor house. It was collossal actually. Many, many rooms in this mansion.
I walked into the grounds and sat on a bench, stunned, admiring the house and the equally huge old-growth trees around it.
It was so beautiful. It was the home of our Creator.
Later I suddenly realized this would be my own home one day.
And I cried.

===
The Iron Piggy Bank

I dreamed that I was back in school and I'd written a report which was pretty good, but they made me do it all over because they knew it could be much longer and deeper if I just put some work into it.

And I woke and stayed in bed in the half-awake state where I often do my best intuitive thinking, if thinking it can be called. I realized it was true, I am very lazy.

Oh, I get the job done if it needs to be done, but every corner that can be cut without too much damage, I cut it. Back in school for instance, I could have been an A+ student, but I was always only a B student, because... what's the point?

So I figured this was something I needed to change, and knew that I could if need be.

But then I got a perception that it was different. That perhaps I should see my laziness in a different way.

I suddenly saw it as an iron piggy bank which I was clutching to my chest and holding onto.

And I carried the laziness/piggy bank with me for a long way, and it became bigger and bigger, and finally opened and yielded a huge wave of gold so big it washed me out the door.

The gold was Love and Spirit, and my laziness is only refusal to use more time and energy than necessary in The World. And the time and energy thus saved went towards the spiritual savings account and have paid big dividends.

------------------------


... I had another dream during a long nap this afternoon. I wasn't gonna tell about it until friends encouraged me.
Partly because I didn't think it meant anything much.
But thinking about it a little now, I think the symbolism is glaringly obvious, and I must have had real resistance not to see it!!

I was going in a private airplane (inside it was more like a house) towards some destination where we had some kind of important mission.
The pilot was a beautiful girl, though there was no kind of romantic interest.
The control room was apparently so advanced that it also served as a kind of kitchen, and she prepared a meal or something.

And in the back was a kind of bedroom, and I took a long nap while we flew, very relaxing, and I woke up a couple hours later and we had progressed most of the way, and the whole thing was just very pleasant.

The message: let the Higher Self steer, and relax!
In fact, at least for me: the less I "work" at it and the more I relax, the smoother the journey goes.

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The white feather jacket

Today as I was waking up, I had a vision dream.
A friend/helper and I was making a jacket. I asked why, I thought it was too much work. He say “feel it”. I did. At that point it seemed like leather, but soft.
And then: it was feathers. The whole jacket was made out of white, soft, beautiful feathers.
The connection to angels’ wings was obvious.

When I wear the jacket I can be anywhere. And: I can *see the truth behind anything*.
I have long thought that such an ability, or something in that direction, is probably the most valuable ability a person can have.
I can’t have that/wear it all the time, it’s too powerful for a half human. But I do believe that every time it’s used is an important step.

About Understanding

Some sages, including A Course In Miracles, say that understanding things will not help you to reach the Light.

Well, I think that understanding is essential on the human level. For the quality of human living. But ACIM also says that understanding will not help you, when it comes to get past the ego. I think it's also from the Course: "Studying the darkness will not help you get to the Light" or such words. I think near the end there will be people who pass Up without having made hardly any gains in understanding.

All there is to Understand are things with forms and limits and separation, and all those things are non-existing. Also all there is to *do* the understanding is a mind, and a mind has structure and form and such, I think... The Light/consciousness does not have form or structure, or limits.

Letting go of a friendship

Let go of a friend...

 I think of of the hard lessons to learn in life is to let got of relationships. Friendships, etc.

 The Ego/Id/lizardbrain teaches us that growth is continuing expansion. Which means of course that if you "lose" a friend, you have failed.

 But we all grow and change, and sometimes this means that we no longer fit into each others' lives in the way we were were used to. We find new horizons and new learnings, and that can sometimes mean that we have to let go of older friendships, so they don't hold us back.

 This can be painful, sadly.

Relaxation on big scale

I got the perception a while ago that the path to awakening is one long relaxation process.

(Even over many lifetimes. Fear is slowly faced and dispersed. And as our fear is really the fear of God, then God will be be revealed.)

Is fear useful?

Some believe that fear is necessary. That without fear we'd absentmindedly just walk into traffic or whatnot. But I think we will be safer without fear, not to mention being able to enjoy life a tonne more.

Too much fear is paralysing, the worst thing to be. And even at a lesser level, fear makes us clumsy. On an expedition, the most dangerous member is the most fearful one. Without fear we handle any danger quickly, intuitively and smoothly.

Time: the portal to the Light

Many years ago I perceived that the universe is a big machine for communication, aiming towards Heaven, and that Time is an ingenious invention which is a bridge to bring about what one thinks can't be because one fears it intensely (re-connecting to the Divine).

And the most ingenious thing about it is that no matter how impossible things seem, time keeps moving and there is always some progress at all times. So failure is simply impossible.

Don't fix your beliefs

When I was younger I suffered from the Ego-based belief that to be uncertain in my beliefs was a weakness. It's a very common feeling, especially amongst males. Since then I've seen that the Universe is nothing if not malleable and relative, and I've seen that every time I state a stout opinion in an area in which I'm not an expert (meaning any area at all pretty much), I will soon hear about how the opposite is true too.

Only Source is True and Unchangeable, so the only sound viewpoint in this universe of form is a very, very flexible one.

----
"Dad, Lisa is making me see both sides of an issue again!"
"Stop that Lisa." 
- The Simpsons

Martinus' revelation and the road to freedom

[Thanks to Signalroom7]

The Danish philosopher Martinus had a great revelation experience in 1921, which he describes below. Very inspiring.
Also striking how similar these experiences are to each other, no matter how far apart in time and space...

Martinus:
I became aware that only life exists, and that darkness and suffering are merely camouflaged love, and that the divine being pervades everything and everybody. 
 But in my own being love's flame was greatly manifolded. I saw everything material alive, the manifestation of God, his veritable flesh and blood. I caressed the so-called "dead" as well as the living material, mineral as well as animal matter. I loved the stones as well as the sentient beings, because they all constituted the body of God. And God's body caressed me. 

It was as if the golden light, the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, the Father's own consciousness, the sensation of His personal presence as a conscious "I" close to me had left everything in an all-penetrating radiance of love. 
I felt that everything was radiating sympathy, within and outside myself. I was being loved by this Father. 
And with an affection firmly reciprocated I re-entered the physical world. The sufferings, sorrows, and tribulations of animals and men were again evident to me, the shady zone of existence once more predominated. But above the deep shadows of the darker zone the golden light kept scintillating in my heart and mind. In my brain and along my spine I still felt the warmth of the supernatural light. 

From my hands and my lips it has already been brought, and will continue to be brought, to shine in other brains, to vibrate in other spines, to scintillate in other eyes, and to be apprehended by other minds. My word is the torchlight of life. 
The divine spirit of it lights up in darkness, removes erroneous belief, and brings about the love of God. 
Everyone living in harmony with this will get to love the Father, and will no more be walking in darkness. For loving the Father is equivalent to loving the world, including everything and everybody. 

This all-pervading love cannot but result in a general mental cohabitation. And this again means the perfect satisfaction of our greatest desires, the fullest acquisition of life, the maximal sensation of happiness, the true experience of bliss.
-Martinus
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His statement: "For loving the Father is equivalent to loving the world, including everything and everybody." I think is essential.
Vincent van Gogh wrote: "I think the best way to love God is to love many things."
If you claim to love God, but hate great portions of mankind, can you really be loving God?
In an unpublished story I wrote many years ago ('Sage, Hearth, and Sailor'), a naive young man stated that his goal was "to become friends with everyone in the whole universe." This may not be practical on a, well, practical level, but it certainly is achievable on a spiritual level, and I think it is a great part of the way HOME.

How do you learn love? - You can't, but you can remove the bariers which makes it seem to not be there, such as traumas, hate, unforgiveness...

What does loving everything has to do with loving God? - When you love everything, The Light is revealed fully, and in the light the World of Form is revealed as what it is, a mere invention, a dream, which end is the return to Source, who we never really left.

- Eolake

Deciding vs reacting

If you are making a choice mainly to be different from others, you are still letting the others make the decisions for you.

From this post. 

Thoughts from Charlie

As I Began to Love Myself… 
Author: Charlie Chaplin

 As I began to love myself I found that anguish and emotional suffering are only warning signs that I was living against my own truth. Today, I know, this is “Authenticity”.

As I began to love myself I understood how much it can offend somebody As I try to force my desires on this person, even though I knew the time was not right and the person was not ready for it, and even though this person was me. Today I call it “Respect”.

 As I began to love myself I stopped craving for a different life, and I could see that everything that surrounded me was inviting me to grow. Today I call it “Maturity”.

 As I began to love myself I understood that at any circumstance, I am in the right place at the right time, and everything happens at the exactly right moment. So I could be calm. Today I call it “Self-Confidence”.

 As I began to love myself I quit stealing my own time, and I stopped designing huge projects for the future. Today, I only do what brings me joy and happiness, things I love to do and that make my heart cheer, and I do them in my own way and in my own rhythm. Today I call it “Simplicity”.

 As I began to love myself I freed myself of anything that is no good for my health – food, people, things, situations, and everything that drew me down and away from myself. At first I called this attitude a healthy egoism. Today I know it is “Love Of Oneself”.

 As I began to love myself I quit trying to always be right, and ever since I was wrong less of the time. Today I discovered that is “Modesty”.

 As I began to love myself I refused to go on living in the past and worry about the future. Now, I only live for the moment, where everything is happening. Today I live each day, day by day, and I call it “Fulfillment”.

 As I began to love myself I recognized that my mind can disturb me and it can make me sick. But As I connected it to my heart, my mind became a valuable ally. Today I call this connection “Wisdom Of The Heart”.

 We no longer need to fear arguments, confrontations or any kind of problems with ourselves or others. Even stars collide, and out of their crashing new worlds are born. Today I know that is “Life”!

 – Charlie Chaplin

Judaism, Heaven, and Oneness

I was told that Judaism does not believe in Heaven, that we are gone after death. I thought, that's a funny kind of religion, not spiritual?

But I looked it up and found this very interesting bit:

At death the soul and body separate. King Solomon said, “The dust will return to the ground as it was, and the spirit will return to God who gave it” (Ecclesiastes 12:17). This means the soul returns to heaven, back to God, where it is enveloped in the Oneness of the Divine.
(From Jews for Judaism site.)

There is probably a lot of disagreements and ignorance about these things, as about everything, but it shows us that at least a sizable part of Jewish intelligentsia not only believes in Heaven, but sees it as a Oneness, which I find highly interesting since it approaches non-dualism.

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This is just a throw-in comment. I know very little about religions, and I dont have too much interest in them since it seems to me they are more concerned with regulating behavior than with education, much less with how to get to Heaven or Oneness. 

Carol's podcast

My friend Carol Howe, who is an exceptional teacher of A Course In Miracles, has started a podcast with so far short episodes, which explains the basics.

The podcast is complementary to her new video series which goes deeper.

A flight poem

We will go where only madmen go
to fly in God's light forever

And when the principles of flight and humanity
are all disappeared from sight

there is only heaven
and God's wings

The painful beauty

I've long had an inner pain associated with especially poignant beauty.
I've not heard anybody else talk or write about it, I think, so it's interesting to find this in L.M. Montgomery's book Anne's House Of Dreams:

Silence and twilight fell over the garden. Far away the sea was lapping gently and monotonously on the bar. The wind of evening in the poplars sounded like some sad, weird, old rune— some broken dream of old memories. A slender shapely young aspen rose up before them against the fine maize and emerald and paling rose of the western sky, which brought out every leaf and twig in dark, tremulous, elfin loveliness. "Isn't that beautiful?" said Owen, pointing to it ... "It's so beautiful that it hurts me," said Anne softly. "Perfect things like that always did hurt me— I remember I called it 'the queer ache' when I was a child. What is the reason that pain like this seems inseparable from perfection? Is it the pain of finality— when we realise that there can be nothing beyond but retrogression?" "Perhaps," said Owen dreamily, "it is the prisoned infinite in us calling out to its kindred infinite as expressed in that visible perfection."


Apart from my belief that the separation is an illusion (and it fits: how can you possibly separate two parts of infinity? If they are both infinite, they'll both be the same. A limited Infinity is of course no infinity.), I think this is just as it is. Beauty connects us to the Infinite, God, Source, but because it's just a tiny connection and we long with all our soul for the full connection which we believe we don't have, it hurts.