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23 Dec 2002 @ 21:11, by craiglang. Spirituality
A couple of nights ago I saw an interesting documentary, aired on Discovery Channel. It was entitled "Jesus the Complete Story". The program had a very interesting take on the mission of Jeshua Ben Yusef (arguably the actual name of Jesus at that time). It looked at the context of the drama, including the politics of the time period, and described some very interesting themes.
One of the biggest themes was Jeshua's mission in the context of the resistance to Rome. He was looking for a way to resist Rome without violence. Many military messiahs had come and gone. Rebellions had occurred, and failed. For long-lasting freedom and reform to occur, the documentary stressed, was that it would not come by military might - Rome was too powerful. The only way that they would be free was to embrace a spiritual path, and nonviolent resistance.
I was struck by the similarity between the situation of that time, and the situation today. In fact, at times they verbally described the Roman occupation, but the visuals on the TV were of Israeli soldiers today, patrolling Jerusalem, the West Bank, etc. So today, while the players are different, the props are arranged differently on the screen, and the weapons have alot more power, the drama is essentially the same. It is a story of political tension, military occupation and resistance - constant rebellion, and simmering hatred.
The tides of history seem to be carrying us closer to war, yet deep within us, the still small voice of God tells us that the answer is seldom if ever force. The spirit is the answer - the only source of real peace.
Deep down, I wonder if this wasn't at least part of the real message of Jeshua Ben Yusef. A message of peace and freedom through nonviolence preached by this itinerant preacher and healer 2000 years ago. A message largely lost until Ghandi, made it succeed in our own times.
I wonder if heeding this message now is how we might achieve peace in the present day - a combination of spiritual enlightenment and nonviolent resistance to war. An interesting thought as we enter the (re-located) holiday celebrating His birth.
Namaste,
-Craig More >
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20 Dec 2002 @ 11:57, by spells. Spirituality
Dear NCN Members,
Here is my "Holiday Gift" to you. Although most or, at least some of the members here believe themselves to be "Spiritual", they still get caught up in the "Holiday Rush", and forget what our true goals on this planet are. (Evolution as Conscious Beings, not good obligational "Consumers" spending money)
For this reason I offer my gift of truth and reality about this so called "Holiday Season".
Enjoy,
Sandi
******
Re-defining What is Normal
Let’s take a look at what is considered “normal behavior” during the so-called “holiday season”. The entire Christmas and New Years hysteria, is really a facade which covers up the reality of our out-of-control, materialistic culture. It is a microcosm that represents all the falsehoods of consumerism, and its shallow fixation on material things. What could more easily demonstrate this shallow unnaturalness, than the consumer-orgy we see happening every Christmas? Does anyone every really wonder why these certain days of the year, are so stressful and personally destructive? Isn’t it a little odd that a holiday that is supposed dedicated to Christ is so materialistic, when Christ himself completely denounced materialism?
The following excerpt is taken from an issue of Great Life Magazine, a prominent health publication. It describes what is considered “normal” by this society at the “holidays”…
The article is entitled, “Give stress a vacation” and begins as follows…
“Life’s hectic pace takes a toll on our sanity from time to time especially around holidays, when demands on our time and energy push us into overdrive. When our minds perceive a challenge or threat, catecholamines are released into the bloodstream. They, along with nerve impulses, prepare the body for fight or flight, the survival mechanism humans have relied on for thousands of years to prepare the body for physical activity. Following the response, the body typically returns to its normal state.”
No one ever seems to ask the essential question here, when talking about “lifes’ hectic pace”. Why is life’s pace hectic? Was it always that way for human beings? No it wasn’t. We ourselves make it hectic and insane. Why do we do this? Because we have all been convinced by the cult of materialism, to “perform” and “consume”. It is not life that is inherently hectic or insane, it is our materialistic values which make it so. As the article points out, this lifestyle “takes a toll on our sanity from time to time especially around holidays, when demands on our time and energy push us into overdrive”. Whose demands? Answer…Our own. As “consumers” we feel a constant social pressure and emotional craving for material distractions. We’re so hollow inside (society) we need something to fill us up, if only for the next hour or minute. We feel this because as a culture we’re out of balance, and teetering on the edge of collective insanity. The modern lifestyle is indeed a “challenge or threat” posed to both the body and mind. This threat deranges the mind with artificial stresses, and destroys the body with cancer and various other diseases and nervous disorders. We literally put ourselves in a circumstance of “fight or flight” every day, but particularly at the “holidays”. Why do we do this? Because we have forgotten what life is all about, and that happiness is not found in a pill, an herb, or a box of plastic playthings.
The article goes on to say…
“But the stresses we undergo in modern society rarely require such a physical reaction, and they don’t always have a definitive outcome that causes a return to homeostasis. As a result, we are perpetually ready to fight or flee, but are not truly relaxed or active enough to release the stress. This state can contribute to high blood pressure, inhibited immunity, heart problems and other maladies. So, coping with stress before it all gets the best of us is key.”
Isn’t it interesting how, as a culture, we only think of “coping with stress” rather than just not being stressed to start with? We assume that stress is a given, because we assume materialism is a given. Why are we ready to “fight or flee” and yet are not “active enough to relieve the stress”? Because we’re too busy doing the 40-60 hour work routine behind a desk, worshipping the Dollar as God, and never questioning the values that have been handed to us by an insane society. We wouldn’t need to work like this and “fight or flee”, if we adopted natural values and lifestyles. But it would seem that simplicity and practicality are not enough for the average American…or at least so we’ve been told by the television. We are stressed because we lack the courage to think for ourselves, and question all this nonsense of a credit card, “for a limited time only” world. If you want love and light, then stay out of debt, quit your job, and develop some natural values that place love above the dollar, and your own en(light)enment above a so-called “carreer”. Let the deed fit the word!
The article continues…
“Prescription drugs, such as Valium and other benzodiazepines, are often prescribed to treat moderate anxiety, but they have sedative and addictive effects…”
Sure, why not pop another pill or take an herb, rather than change what is causing stress and death on a mass scale. Take the easy way out, and try to believe that God is coming to clean up our mess for us, or that just saying the words like “love and light” will somehow change a miserable lifestyle without ever having to do anything practical in your life. Spirituality is not just about saying nice things! It’s about living it out in your daily routine! It means questioning what is false regardless of what the neighbors might say!
From the same magazine and month, another article entitled “Why am I Blue?” begins as follows…
“It’s the holidays and you know you’re supposed to be happy, but SOMEHOW you’re more melancholy than merry.. Fortunately St. John’s wort offers a simple way to beat the blues. More than 25 studies have concluded that….
There is no “somehow” about it. We are living the wrong life, and trying to apply ourselves to lies and consumer fictions! Ok, you want love and light? Then just don’t participate any more in the darkness and despair of the dollar-as-God world! Think about the essential meaning of the word “sincerity”! In other words GET REAL about your spiritual practice, rather than just giving concepts you read somewhere a little lip service, through placating pleasantries. Go beyond just words, and actually change your lifestyle, (or not if hypocrisy suits you just fine).
The REAL spiritual practitioner questions everything, and blindly accepts nothing. If you are interested in being REAL, then try not doing Christmas any more! Realistically speaking, how SINCERE is it to give “loving” gifts and “heart-felt greeting cards” to others, just because the calendar says it’s December 25th? Love is not contained in wrapping papers or credit cards! Plastic trinkets and obligatory present-giving are not worth spending months in debt just to pay off. Fulfilling the consumer ideals of the corporate world is not worth suicide via stress.
And then there is “New Years” where everyone gets drunk and tries to pretend how “successful” and “happy” they are, while secretly drowning their indebted, stressed-out misery in another glass of alcohol and pills. Let’s face it, society is filled with lies and misconceptions. Bail out while you still can! Pull your kids out of the public brainwashing schools. Turn off the television, or at least see it for what it is. Quit your full time job, and only work when you have to live simply and naturally. Really focus your life on love, light, health and clarity, rather than “investment opportunities” and private empire building.
The “holidays” are perfectly representative of the whole ridiculous, materialistic way of life. They are literally brimming over with denial and absurd beliefs, such as the idea that giving of material objects expresses love. What bull. Why buy into such nonsense, and then spend the rest of your life fulfilling a shallow ideal, that is not even of your own making? As a culture and as individuals, we need to re-define what is “normal” living and what is not. You can talk about Love and God all you want, but how you live is what demonstrates what you REALLY mean when you say those words.
The only thing a materialist really loves is another paycheck… like a junkie wants just one more fix. We work endlessly to support our habit, not for any noble cause or basic need. That lifestyle is not “normal”.
Think about it.
Matthew Webb visionquest@eoni.com More >
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10 Dec 2002 @ 15:53, by craiglang. Spirituality
Reading Shakti's post on the Earth Sanctuary struck a similar chord within me. I awoke this morning with the sense of not being able to see where the next step was.
The most meaningful metaphor I have heard yet, for ones life path is the concept of following the breadcrumbs. The trail will lead you to where God wants you to go. God alone knows how you will fulfill your life purpose, and destiny. Yet today, when awakening, I realized that I was not able to even guess where the next breadcrumb might be. How could I begin to get there? Is it close? Is it far? Does it even exist? Or even, did the birds eat it? There was the sense that life's path is taking me square into a brick wall. The dream that seems so clear on most days, today seemed to be a distant mirage. Somehow, the road had dead ended. Or had it?
As I got ready to go to work, and as I did my morning moment of meditation, What I was reminded of again is that which I am often reminded of during prayer, meditation, and in the events around me. And this is to know that the time when things look their bleakest can be the very time when the hope can be the brightest.
In the Bible is a statement that "Faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen" (Hebrews 11:1). And on those days when the next step in the road seems to be far away - when the road seems to go nowhere - it is only faith that keeps us moving.
Shakti speaks of persevering through thick and thin (I won't say what the thick and thin material was...). The highest compliment I could possibly pay her is to simply echo what she says. And sometimes it is only faith - the belief in the dream, hope for that which is not seen - that enables us to continue.
In the end - Faith Manages
Namaste,
-Craig
CL Note 12/10/2002 21:45 CST - Added a post-script about living in the NOW. Check out "More", below... More >
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8 Dec 2002 @ 15:15, by beto. Spirituality
TAOISM TODAY
Tien Cheng Tzu
Existence is a permanent manifestation of the spirit in matter. It is the answer of the receptive matter (mater) to the creative spirit's impregnating action. Both emanate of the great Tao, which is above and beyond matter and spirit, further than to exist or not to exist, and far away from the philosophical mysteries. Tao is the invisible river of nothing that runs behind the things, the phenomena and the events. Chuang Tzu teaches that the Tao is outside the words and the things; it doesn't express for words or the silence. Tao is noticed where neither words nor the silence exist anymore.
To live is not to pursue the visible or immaterial fruits of this world, be them immediate – conquered to the force – or expected in any future, as a reward. To live is not to be subject to the wheels of a gear – mental or physic – where the wandering soul is arrested by some time. To live is to find the inexistent Tao and to let float with him, calmly, amid storms if needed.
The objective of life is not pleasure, nor power, nor wealth, nor erudition, nor the conquest of the virtue, nor spiritual evolution. The objective of the life is to discover the Tao of every moment, to smile, and no more permit you to separate of it. The objective of life is the encounter of the Self when navigating safe along the Tao River. The objective of life is to learn how to navigate in the great river Tao.
While you're still in the way along the little Tao, you seek the knowledge and the wisdom by the development of the four fundamental virtues: Jen, the love-compassion born of honesty that allows to feel the difficulties and the happiness of others as if they were yours; Yi, that is the nobleman's feeling of his duty to the other ones; born of the altruism, it allows to act devoid of personal interest; Li, that is born of the adoration for the Sky and for the Earth, manifesting in the harmonious procedure in which living turns into a permanent ritual. And, finally, Chih, that is the wisdom able to understand everything and is born of the long experience and of the knowledge of the celestial road, where no longer disobedience exists. Thus taught Kung Fu Tzu – known in the Occident as Confucius.
But in the great Tao there are not searches nor virtue, nor objectives, nor obedience, nor any rule to proceed. It is in this great Tao that live the truth and the perfection of acting that we can only accomplish in an imperfect way, darkened by our ignorance and the illusions wrought in the mind.
The subtle secret of acting is the same secret of the essence, of the existence and of life. The objective, therefore, is to find the truth of our existence and to live according to it, simply, avoiding the deviations and seductions.
Until this is gotten our life will be an imperfection, a difficulty, a fight and a problem. It is only for the feeling of the Tao that we can smile of our imperfection, of the difficulties, of the struggle and suffering that settle in our lives. It is only for the existence in the Tao that the problem will be solved, the difficulty and the struggle will be outdated and our actions can head for perfection.
However, the road of the learning is long and full of traps, and to arrive to the marvels it is necessary to pass the traps. The traps of the road are the seductions of transitory, ephemeral and perishable pleasures. Only the fixation of the mind in that which is invisible, silent and without form can assure a safe navigation.
The feeling of the Tao comes through the union of the complementary opposites, in a higher level of consciousness than thinking and the mind. In the level beyond the mind and thinking float what shows as symbols. Symbols are the rafts that bring down to the level of the mind the flashes and insights of a larger consciousness which resides further than thought and words. In the symbols are hidden secrets and mysteries of different degrees, one for each understanding. The superior man – or woman, in equality of conditions – who knows them, doesn't talk about these things: he or she recognizes what is secrecy and cares to preserve the mystery.
The march of a thousand leagues begins with a step. However, it is right that those who fasten attention and mind to the imperishable, even if only for a few minutes daily, are beyond the first step, already. Nonetheless, others hesitate on the sill of the old portal, because they still need to study. This is the long phase of the doubt; disrupted, but necessary. For these, the road still didn't come as such, soaring over the fields and lakes of the imagination. Still, it is necessary to smile and to enter on the road, even without seeing it. It is also necessary to accomplish the decision and not to wait for results; the result will come anyhow. Just as the sleep, when he or she grows drowsy, the result arrives when one doesn't think on it anymore. ButÂ… who is willing to the first and hesitant step?
It is at the lakes of the imagination that the rafts of symbols float, forming strange configurations amongst themselves. To tranquilize the agitation in the surface of the lake is a preliminary task that takes place for no-acting, for no-doing, for the no-knowledge, for silencing, for removing: never for increasing. When the surface is calm, the symbols that float are organized in a rich mandala of changing colors that can only be seen by the central eye of the soul, the window of the spirit that only has a square inch: the eye of Horus.
Happy it is the one who knows the mystery and opens the window of the spirit. Thereafter, nothing else will need to be said. Soon he or she will be received in the palace of Yu-Huang, the Emperor of Jade.
Tien Cheng Tzu is a fictional character of the book The Annals of an Imaginary Symposium, by Beto Hoisel.
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6 Dec 2002 @ 19:09, by cho. Spirituality
deleted More >
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 28 Nov 2002 @ 01:59, by ming. Spirituality
I'm thankful that there is a little girl who will wake me up and take me by the hand to go outside in the wind and sit by the curb to watch the leaves blow off the trees. And who will hand me an instrument so we can march in a parade through the house. Somebody who will remember that it is always a good time for chocolate milk.
I am thankful for other people too. Thankful for love and loyalty, for being there no matter what, for caring, for trusting, for noticing and remembering things I forget. But mostly for waking me up to the preciousness of life in the moment. Making me breathe and making me smile. More >
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27 Nov 2002 @ 20:54, by craiglang. Spirituality
On the eve of the Thanksgiving holiday in the United States, there doesn't appear on the surface to be much to celebrate. We teeter on the brink of war. The environment seems to be lurching toward oblivion. We seem to be caught between one faction of the world that wants to terrorize us, and another that wants to tyranize us.
Yet even while the world seems to be going to Hell in a handbasket, there is still room for hope and thanks giving. Why? Because we are human. We care, we love, we think, we feel, and above all, we ARE.
At this time, when the material world seems to be at its bleakest, we need to realize that it is just that - the material world. And we are spirits living in the material world - warm little sparks of God, living in human bodies. And when things in the outside world get realy hosed, we still have this for comfort.
So when it seems like there isn't much to be thankful for on this day, we can remember that we are still able to form that or any other viewpoint. This means that we are conscious, spiritual beings with free will. And to me, that in itself is enough to be thankful for.
Namaste,
-Craig More >
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27 Nov 2002 @ 16:54, by sharie. Spirituality
People want to be free, to live in peace, to feel alive, to feel joy and share joy, to feel love and share love, to feel loved and appreciated, and people want to know the truth, and
this is good.
Love with all your heart, all your soul, all your mind, and all your strength... Share your love, enjoy your love...
Love...
Commit your heart to truth and peace, and choose joy.
You'll find a whole new world opening to welcome you.
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3 Nov 2002 @ 17:38, by sharie. Spirituality
All things are possible.
So the question is: What do I believe in most?
What do I want most?
More than anything, I believe in eternal life.
I feel life eternal, both inside and outside of me. The Spirit of Life is eternal.
More than anything, I want Heaven on Earth.
The focus of my Newslog focus is becoming more and more about Heaven on Earth.
It's the best of all possible worlds - human, earthly, spiritual, and cosmic.
How does Heaven on Earth come to be?
Heaven on Earth is here now. It always has been here now.
The real question is "how do we come to be heaven"?
We have always been heaven on earth. It's simply a matter of awakening to the truth of who we are.
Humankind has a consciousness, which we experience in our daily lives.
Each of us has a mind of our own, and a vast spectrum of beliefs, experiences, and goals to choose from...
rather magnificent when you think of it, because there is so much we can comprehend and retrieve, inter-relate and construct.
The Earth also has a consciousness, an intelligence, a brilliance... a vast array of life forms, each with their own goals.
Minerals have a consciousness, a life form, which your body depends on (iron, magnesium, carbon, and so on) You'd be dead if it weren't for the life-force - the consciousness - in the minerals.
Gases have a consciousness too. You'd be dead without the life-force in oxygen, nitrogen, and so on.
The cosmos too has a consciousness, an intelligence, balancing the planets, the expansion and contraction of suns and solar systems...
The source of all of the physical realm -here on earth, human life, and throughout the cosmos - is intelligent. To some, it is God. Others call it nirvana. People around the world, from cultures of every variety, have their own name for the All-Knowing.
What is the meaning of this intelligent universe?
That the oneness of consciousness be embraced in all of life.
This is heaven on earth.
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19 Oct 2002 @ 15:15, by sharie. Spirituality
As beings of light, our multi-faceted brilliance allows us to experience the manifestation of anything we choose. The question is "what do we choose?"
If you wonder what you choose, the answer is:
you choose what you experience.
If you want to choose to experience something different than what you have been experiencing, you can choose that too.
The question is "what do you want to choose?"
I choose the best of all possible worlds, and since anything is possible, I choose heaven on earth, which I think must surely be better than heaven in the sky. It seems to be that the Earth is such a wonderful and marvelous place. And that *heaven after death* place is not that appealing to me.
So I've been focusing my investigation on heaven on earth, and have been discovering quite a lot about it. It's a way of life with loving kindness and heavenly place. A magical, miraculous realm of beauty and wonder. I believe in this more than I believe in anything, so I'm choosing to focus my heart and mind on the realm and the kingdom of heaven on earth.
I'll keep you posted of my progress.
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