Tag Archive for: spiritual awakening

Measuring Your Spiritual Growth

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One of my favorite Spiritual teachers is Adyashanti. He said a measure of how advanced you are on your spiritual journey, or your level of spiritual “awakeness”, is how you treat others that don’t agree with you – especially spiritually or politically. Do you overtly or silently judge them? Or do you allow other people to have their own beliefs and opinions with the understanding that everyone is on their own soul journey of growth and development?

God/Source/Life is a large enough container for all beliefs…and we are a microcosm of that Source. As humans, we are meant to carve out our experience with our own learned perspectives and beliefs, and hopefully they change, evolve and expand over time if we allow ourselves to be open, curious and driven to grow. It is natural for us to do so. The human ego self has its own personality, quirks and beliefs. But simultaneously, there’s a part of you that does not change…a part of you that is in the eternal now because it is the Eternal Now. We are multi-dimensional. Which part of you are you going to identify with? Spiritual awakening is about identifying more with the higher, more permanent part of you that is ok with all beliefs. It doesn’t mean that your ego self doesn’t have its opinions and may even feel drawn to go to an anti-Trump or a pro-Trump rally. But while you do that, can you do it with the awareness of Oneness, rather than “us vs them” mentality? If you can, you’ll find that your efforts yield better results than if you simply contribute to the ongoing dance of polarity.

The higher consciousness of The Collective (see August’s Blog for an introduction to The Collective) explains that we are in the 3rd dimension, moving towards the 5th. The 3rd Dimension is a lower vibration frequency of duality and contrasts…good/bad, black/white, happy/sad, love/loss, love/fear, ignorance/wisdom, restlessness/peace, acceptance/judgment, right/wrong, right/left, etc. It is a plane of existence to provide contrasts for us to decide who we want to be and what we want to create in this place of polarity and contrasts. Earth is a spiritual playground of role plays that appear very real for the purpose of challenging ourselves to decide and create who we choose to be…do you wish to be a person who operates primarily from love or fear? You’ll create or burn karma depending on how you respond in this plane of contrasts.

The 5th Dimension, on the other hand, is a higher frequency plane with fewer contrasts. There is a natural letting go of the judgments of right and wrong, being replaced with an understanding that people either operate with a clear sensing/knowing of their Oneness/Source nature or else they operate with ignorance of that Truth. When you are aware of your own divinity and connection to all life, you are aware that what you do to another you actually do to yourself, and there will be a natural love, compassion and acceptance that replaces all judgment. Compassion and an explainable love for others (even those who are very different than you in beliefs or culturally) is simply a by-product of spiritually awakening. You don’t have to try to cultivate it, it simply is natural when you begin to identify your self with your Higher Self that has Oneness consciousness.

The 5th Dimension is more about moving towards what you want, what sparks your passion and enthusiasm, with an acceptance that others don’t have to want what you want. When you operate with Christ consciousness or Oneness consciousness, your passions naturally tend to be less self-serving and more others-serving or life-serving.

In closing, here are some inspiring words from The Collective: “When you incarnated, your intention was to bring the greatest measure of your divinity to your experience as a human, to recognize what you are while in this dense physical dimension of forgetfulness. Always increase your recognition of what you are capable of as divine beings. Dwell in a lower frequency while mastering living as the divine Being and master Creator that you are.”

May we recognize this challenging life as a role play to help us grow and evolve in awareness of our true divine nature.

You Are Love

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This human experience is all about voluntarily being asleep and trying to live a life from the handicap of seemingly being cut off from Source and from our true authentic selves. When the time is right for you as a soul, you begin the spiritual process of awakening to who and what you truly are. Life then begins to make more sense, and subtle anxieties tend to fall away as you realize that earth life is more of a role play for us to experience ourselves in. I love Thich Nhat Hanh’s quote, “We are here to awaken from the illusion of our separateness.” A few weeks ago, I posted a blog by one of my favorite teachers of awakening, Adyashanti. I’m going to follow along that same line and share some brief words by another one of my favorite awakened sages who now resides in the Twin Cities area, Leonard Jacobson. Please enjoy his words of truth:
“When you are present, you are love, and there’s nothing you can do about it.

You radiate love in the same way that a candle flame radiates light and it has nothing to do with who or what you love. Humanity has become hopelessly lost in love. We lose ourselves in the object of our love and in the process, we lose ourselves. We disconnect from the source of the love, which exists at the very center of our Being. Then we feel a certain kind of emptiness, because we have moved away from the center. We are afraid of the emptiness, and so we relentlessly pursue love outside of ourselves. We want to be loved. We fall in love. We lose ourselves in the object of the love, which takes us further from the center. Eventually, we become so lost in the pursuit of love and all the hope, pain, fear and attachments associated with it, that we can no longer be present. And if we cannot be present, we cannot find our way back to the source of the love, which is at the very center within us.

The truth is that if you love anyone or anything, it simply means that you are love. The one you are loving in the moment might be lovable, but the source of the love is always within you. If another loves you, do not take it too personally. It simply means that the other is love. If I am present and I am love, and you are present and you are love, then why do I need you to love me? Why do you need me to love you? The truth is that we do not need to be loved, for if we are present, we are love. So let us hold hands, and gaze together upon this wondrous world with love.

Love everything. Love the dogs. Love the children. Love the trees. Love your wife or husband. But remember it is because you are love.”
What it means to awaken

What Does it Mean to “Awaken?”

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There are many ways to talk about awakening. In one sense, “awaken” means to shift from the identification with the ego self to identification with the spiritual self. The ego operates from all of the programming and conditioning learned through life experiences, while the spiritual self transcends the physical reality.

Keep in mind we are multi-dimensional beings…part of us grows and changes physically, mentally, emotionally and also as a soul. However, another part of us does not. What part of you doesn’t change? What part of you can say “I’m sad” when you’re five, and then 50 years later can say “I’m sad”? Who or what is this permanent “I” that can notice  feelings and beliefs that come and go? There’s a dimension of you that transcends your ego-based emotions and beliefs, as well as your body. As we awaken we begin to become aware of this permanent life within and yet beyond the form.

One result of awakening is freedom from the fear-based conditioning that the ego lives from and is governed by. Fear is a major component of the ego. Ego = Separation. It’s true that we have separate bodies, but it’s more true that we are souls using a body, and even truer that all souls come from the same one energy source. To fully awaken means to live from the One Self. Christ consciousness means oneness consciousness, and that is why Jesus was also known as Christ, and preached about treating others as yourself…because ultimately they are your Self.

Therefore, waking up is really a radical shift in identity, according to Adyashanti. To awaken is to begin to live from the vantage point of spirit, which is what you can never really separate yourself from because you ultimately are it. To fully awaken is to understand this first as an intellectual concept, then from the heart, and finally from the gut as an absolute inner knowing.

Another way of deciphering your ego self from your spiritual self is to view it through the frame that author Neile Walsch puts it. He suggests that all human thought and actions are based in either fear or love (ego or spirit). He articulates, “Fear is the energy which contracts, closes down, draws in, runs, hides, hoards, harms. Love is the energy which expands, opens up, sends out, stays, reveals, shares, heals.” He says, fear judges, is intolerant, lies beneath anger and holds onto it, whereas love empathizes, is tolerant and seeks understanding. Fear feels lack. Love feels wholeness, completeness, that all needs are met. Fear separates, divides, and is based on conditional acceptance. Love sees and feels Oneness. Love unites, and is based on unconditional acceptance. The communication of fear is vague, indirect and withholding of truth, whereas the communication of love is clear, direct, honest and specific.

Where does the love in your heart come from? You are not separate from it. It is there at your core when you peel back the layers of the ego-self. You can fully experience this with any deep inner journey experience like past life regression or life-between-lives, because the ego-self is rendered silent during these inward sojourns.

In closing, here is some pertinent wisdom from Tarun Sardana: “We don’t need a reason to be happy. We need a reason to be unhappy. Happiness is our real nature. When a seeker reaches the Self, bliss is experienced, as that is the very nature of the Self. To make a river flow, we need not give any instructions or reasons. We just need to remove the barriers that we have put up and the river will start flowing on its own because flowing is its very nature. In the same way, bliss is the very nature of the Self, one needs no reason to welcome it; just remove the barriers of the ego-self and the Self shall show up as Sat-Chit-Anand (truth-consciousness-bliss).”

To wake up is to know who and what you really are, and then to live from this place. It’s what we are all trying to learn, whether we are conscious of it or not.

How to Love Yourself

How to Love Yourself

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One day when I was leading a group, someone shared that their goal was to learn to love themselves, but felt it was an impossible task. Others agreed with this statement. Most of them were either bombarded with an endless barrage of negative self-talk, or they felt strong guilt from some past actions. I offered that the easiest way to love yourself is to really know your yourself…to realize that you aren’t who you think you are. The ‘you’ that you have a hard time loving isn’t really ‘you’. You are not your programming and conditioning. Negative thoughts about self come from somewhere, they all have a beginning point in an event or circumstance – you’re not born with these thoughts, unless there’s a past life influence, but even then they began at some point in that past life or the one before, etc. Sometimes the programming can be subtly and unconsciously passed down through the generations, with parents influencing their children based on how they were raised, how love or anger was communicated or not communicated.

Just like you can open the hood of a car to explore how it’s wired and how it works, you can engage in deep self-reflection to see how your programming and conditioning began. An effective way to do this exploration is to go within to access a higher state of awareness. For example, if you have a strong feeling of guilt because of a past action, you could imagine floating above that scene and investigate what was going through your mind at the time. Perhaps you did something regretful because at the time you thought you were gaining or getting something from it, given the mindset that you had of yourself and the world at that time. The only purpose of guilt is to point to what you could do differently next time, and in that moment of awareness you are doing precisely what your highest purpose in life is…to learn, grow, evolve and awaken. The primary way humans learn is by making mistakes. So from the viewpoint of your soul, mistakes are only seen as an opportunity to grow, and in that moment of seeing, your soul is happy. The highest part of you is timeless and guiltless; it doesn’t care how long it takes to get a lesson. Just as you can tinker with a machine to make it run more smoothly, we can be aware of the amazing impact we would have on ourselves and the world if we released the negative thought programs that govern our life and replace them with clarity, confidence, creative potential and freedom – all qualities of our truest self. We’re not here to berate ourselves, or remain stuck and recoiled in fear and guilt, living from a false sense of self. We’re here to challenge ourselves to shine and thrive, to learn to live from our potential, and to experience that the joy of doing so feels better, freer and “more real”.

You are the infinite being that can be aware of a passing mood or thought, and investigate where beliefs originated. There’s a part of you that can be aware of your thoughts. Who or what is this ‘I’ that can say ‘I’ feel happy, and then can notice ‘I’ feel sad 10 minutes later? Thoughts, moods and beliefs can come and go, but the more permanent ‘real’ you is the constant, unchanging awareness, forever anchored in the here and now, that can notice the mind’s ever-changing moods and thought patterns, like watching sticks or debris washing down a stream. The awakened sage, Eckhart Tolle, says the next step in human evolution is to become aware of our thoughts, thus creating a gulf between ‘us’ and our thought patterns. Therein lies the difference between suffering and liberation. It depends on where we place our identity…the ever-changing mind or the mysterious, expansive, boundless awareness that can witness it.

 

What is a Past Life Regression?

What Past Life Regression Really Is

Reading Time: 8 minutes

To many people in our western culture, past life regression can seem far-fetched. I understand this. Growing up as a pastor’s son, we didn’t talk much about reincarnation, much less about past life regression. The purpose of this article is to explain the process in a way that makes more sense, not only for those whom the concept of reincarnation is new, but also for those who are considering doing a past life regression someday. This article is even for those who have already experienced it, because anyone who has ever gone deep into a past life regression knows that it is extremely difficult, if not impossible, to fully describe it in words…and there’s a good reason for that. After 23 years of guiding over 4,000 clients through past life regression, I want to articulate how the process unfolds.

We are multi-dimensional. In western culture, our primary identity is a body that has a soul. Yet it would be far more accurate to think of you as a soul who is using a body. If you’ve ever witnessed a dead body that had his or her eyes open, you’d notice that something seems obviously different than when they were alive. The life, energy and consciousness is missing, the animating light called the soul is gone from their eyes. The body then appears like a shell and who and what they really are is no longer attached to their body. The part of you that lives on after you leave the body is pure energy. You can’t harm or destroy a soul because it is outside of this physical dimension. The energy particles are vibrating at a much higher frequency and consequently no longer visible to our sight, similar to a fast-moving fan blade.

So this is what you are now as you read this – a soul using a body. The ‘relatively real you’ never dies. The body is released and you transition to a higher vibrational state, and then eventually return to a different body to continue your soul’s mission (usually). Perhaps the strongest evidence of this is the multitude of cases in which people remember intricate, personal details of past lives and then later verify them. I won’t go into that here, but for those who are interested, there’s a website dedicated to many of these cases…reincarnationresearch.com, especially note Ian Stevenson’s research. Or visit victorzammit.com. Or go to youtube and type in “Children Who Remember Past Lives.” Anyway, the point is that as a soul, you are eternal, indestructible and transcendent of this dimension of time and space, and these days there’s enough evidence of that that even a logical minded skeptic can believe in reincarnation just on the sheer evidence.

What keeps you anchored in this realm of time and space? Your identification with the body, along with your full focus and attention being placed on all of the objects in this physical dimension, such as another person, a tree, a cat, etc., rather than on the life energy behind these forms or even between the space of objects. Not only that, but at a young age you begin to subtly identify with all the mind programming and conditioning from each life experience that goes along with the growing up of this body. So we take the body and the conditioning of the mind to be who and what we are, rather than the life energy force that animates the body and transcends this existence. It is why awakened sages have compared the human experience to “the greatest slight of hand card trick.”

So if you’re already this eternal being, you should be able to tune into what you already are, the part that lies beyond this realm of time and space. How? You begin by withdrawing your focus and attention from this outside, material world and turn it inward. Hypnosis is a great tool to do this, quickly creating the effect of an extremely deep meditation. To the degree that you ignore your left-brain or analytical mind, and instead focus entirely on the right-brain’s intuitive flow of information in the present moment, is to the degree you begin to tune into and resonate with this eternal part of yourself. The logical left-brain is an important tool to navigate and live in this physical dimension, but it certainly blocks you if you want to experience the higher vibrational dimension, and the soul aspect of yourself.

Past life regression is an efficient means to ‘tune into what you already are’ because it offers a slow, steady, systematic method: You first allow yourself to ‘un-identify’ with the dominant thoughts surrounding your current body. Then allow yourself to identify with a different body/mind personality that begins to form in your awareness. It is important to focus your full attention on the intuitive information that drops into your consciousness regarding this different body/mind, while simultaneously letting go of your left-brain’s analytical tendency to comment on that information. Another way to say this is to experience the information that comes to you by sensing and feeling it with your body wisdom. As you do so, a slow unraveling of information regarding that life will drop into awareness piece by piece in the form of mental pictures, emotions or intuitive insights as the journey of that life becomes increasingly clearer. The information may alternately come to you from the 3rd person or 1st person point of view. The life may take unexpected turns, but eventually you’ll get an impression of the end of that past life. This is the point where you begin to slowly identify with the lighter dimension of your soul-being that experiences a variety of lives for its own journey of growth, evolution and awakening.

As you continue to focus your full attention on the experience of tuning into and moving deeper into soul identification, you’ll notice the following: A deep sense of well-being; the continual mind chatter in the back of your mind completely stops and is replaced with a vast, expansive, calm awareness that feels like a higher version of ‘you’; information ‘drops into’ you in a very different manner than usual….the reason that words cannot describe it is because words belong to the realm of our mind, and now information comes from beyond the mind in what can best be described as a ‘telepathic download’ of simultaneously occurring pictures, sense impressions, insights and/or instantaneous intuitive ‘inner knowings’. Clients notice that words feel inadequate to describe what they’re experiencing, as if words capture merely the tip of an iceberg. As you continue to tune into and resonate increasingly more with the soul aspect of self, the above characteristics become more pronounced, and insights that drop into you are permeated with love, clarity, wisdom and selflessness because there is no more sense of self that is lacking anything. From this higher state of vibration, you have access to all the love, joy, peace, security and creativity that was ever lacking in the human experience, should you choose to place focus and attention on it. At this point, there’s a deep sense that your ‘real’ self is actually never separate from these qualities. Most clients will feel this higher dimensional aspect of themselves towards the later part of the session. And if they go even deeper during a Life-Between-Lives session, they may notice that there is very little information that they do not have access to.

Keep in mind that we are multi-dimensional beings. So past life regression is ultimately an exercise in tuning into the spiritual aspect of self that is vibrating at a faster rate, a rate that allows you to move closer in resonance with the spiritual dimension of guides and departed loved ones, as well as accessing information that will enable you to grow, evolve and awaken. From the soul’s higher vantage point, it becomes clearly evident which subconscious thoughts and beliefs are holding you back and limiting you, as well as who gave them to you and which life experiences caused them to take hold. Most importantly, you know beyond words that they don’t belong to the ‘real’ you, so they can be released. It’s an exercise in awakening to a more conscious aspect of self. Carl Jung once wrote, “Healing is about becoming conscious of that which is unconscious.” Past life regression is certainly an excellent means of shining a spotlight on any unconscious, limiting beliefs or perspectives that are holding us back in life, in addition to experiencing the freedom of what it would feel like to let them go.

When you come to the session with an intent to gain a sense of another existence that you’ve had as an eternal soul being, especially with the intent to gain insight, clarity and resolution with any sort of problematic issue, your inner guidance system will show you a life that will be precisely for your benefit to see, and it will contain one or more soul lessons that will perfectly pertain to your present life situation. However, the process will be blocked if you try to consciously direct or analyze the session, because the information can only be accessed by tuning into a different, more subtle, intuitive stream of information.

The mystic Edgar Cayce once declared, “Imagination is the gateway to the soul.” This is true for past life regression. Your imagination launches this inner journey. The past life information then starts coming to you slowly and feels like you’re making it up. However, research shows that it may be an actual past life, a metaphor, or a mixture of both. To the degree that you focus on whatever impressions your intuitive guidance shows you without analytical mind commentary, is to the degree that you’ll move deeper into the experience. Roughly 10 minutes after the first past life images begin to come, the session kicks into a ‘higher gear’ and information begins to drop into your awareness in that ‘telepathic download’ of images coupled with ‘intuitive knowing’ described above. It later begins to feel ‘more real’ as emotions may suddenly emerge out of nowhere, followed by the reasons behind the emotions 5-30 seconds later.

Paradoxically, even though the session begins by feeling like you’re making it up, it always ends at a level of consciousness that feels much more ‘awake’ and ‘aware’ than your ordinary, everyday level of consciousness. Trying to describe this state creates a conundrum. How do you describe a state of awareness that makes your normal, everyday level of waking consciousness feel like it’s asleep? As we tune more deeply into our soul self, we become increasingly anchored in the present moment. As this happens, it becomes more apparent that our ordinary states of waking consciousness rarely consist of being completely present…we’re usually lost in the world of our minds, subtly pulled into the future or past, along with the mind’s endless commentary, which according to sages is exactly where all of the suffering resides. So when you are free and separate from all of the mind’s negative self talk, limiting beliefs, continual chatter, etc., a vast, calm clarity replaces it, along with a ‘knowing’ beyond words that you are never separate from this clear, awake, peaceful awareness. This cannot be comprehended by the mind, because it’s a state of consciousness that is best described by Eckhart Tolle as “above thought”.

Thus, past life regression ultimately brings you to the truth of your being, the truth of who and what you really are, which can only be experienced when limiting thoughts and beliefs from the past are no longer part of the equation and your mind is silent. This truth can only be felt, sensed and known as a direct, immediate experience in the ‘eternal’ here and now moment, as it is unknowable by the mind…words can only point to it. Past life regression is an exercise that connects and anchors you in this higher level of consciousness. The vast majority of clients experience this understanding by the end of the session.

After the client emerges, I often hear: “Wow! That wasn’t what I expected.” Indeed, it is an experience that is literally beyond words. There are few experiences as sacred, profound and holy as tuning into your own wholeness and completeness.

Approximately 95% of the time, clients emerge from a past life regression with a greater understanding of themselves, their soul, and their present life experiences. The degree of positive impact ranges from subtle to profoundly life changing, depending on the essence of the person, and the ripeness and readiness for change. There is a theme to this work: As you go within, your inner guidance gives you precisely what you need, usually to the degree that you are urgently seeking answers or resolution. The reason for this was simply put by one of my client’s spirit guides: “Just as the body’s instinct is to breathe, the soul’s instinct is to grow and evolve.” Thus, you tend to see what will be most beneficial for your growth as a person and as a soul, and problems tend to dissolve into solutions when viewed from the vantage point of our higher spiritual Self.