We've discussed this at length, but never really reached any view that reconciles the 'soul' and 'no soul' views - the latter epitomised by the Buddhist view that there's nothing that continues permanently between reincarnations - that the apparent 'me' is in reality only an aggregate of happenings that temporarily align to create that appearance.

I've been playing with this (am I a piece of Source/primordial awareness driving a convincing but ultimately unreal body through existence like a car, or a physical mind and body that happens to host a bit of Source?), and it strikes me (drawing on teaching and other's experience) that to try to explain my current take on it more clearly might be of interest.

Life in this reality may (to list two common views from among among the lots of possibilities) be a chosen learning experience, or something we've got ourselves stuck in through belief in separation from Source. The latter put another way might be the result of our getting hung up on the above belief that 'me' is truly a 'real' physical entity living on Earth in space time.

Buddhist (and I guess broader Eastern) teachings suggest that karma is the package of beliefs that results in mind creating this whole flow of reality, as well as at the 'me' level the physical body and the circumstances into which we are born, our tendencies, and the happenings we will be exposed to during our lives. This includes the whole package of beliefs that creates the ego or mistaken sense of self or 'me'.

Extra normal experience and teaching suggest that there's a 'piece' of Source or primordial mind in each of us - some of us can at times separate from the physical (karmic existence), and even temporarily transcend individuality to again experience Source.

This piece of Source manifests characteristics like awareness, intuitive knowing, creativity and love - but it's not easily defined, and while its manifestations mix with and are easily drowned out by those of ego it's quite separate from it and from the karmically created ego, 'me' or self.

Because of timelessness and the blurring of the boundaries between individuality and unity it can't easily be defined using our normal mind as a simple separate 'me' or 'part me' - it's perhaps a form of existence that's pretty much impossible to describe using our space/time based language and concepts.

It doesn't have to reincarnate, but the problem (maybe not a problem?) is that in most cases it's at some point forgotten what it truly is, and instead identified wholly with the manifestations of the ego - with existence as an individual time/space vehicle. (body and mind apparently living a physical life as a 'me') You could perhaps say that it's become so habituated to physicality and using language and space/time concepts that it finds it harder and harder to imagine the possibility of any other mode of existence.

The newly incarnating (first time around) bit of Source can probably choose the type of vehicle it creates/experiences physical existence through, but those that have been around lots of times before and have got caught up in the above belief/addiction are probably stuck with dragging the the latest  package of karmic propensities (beliefs) they have mistakenly attached themselves to with them - and hence they create another life based on them.

They feel a need to reincarnate back into the physical, because while the karma initially separates  in the afterlife state the result is that after a short time they start feeling themselves an incomplete 'me' - as a result of no longer having the body and existence in the physical life they have come to regard as normal.

With the result that (as in the Bardo teachings of Tibetan Buddhism) they start the process of  reattaching to their karmic beliefs by creating in the afterlife ( ::) I'll just nibble one chocolate biscuit!), and next thing get sucked into a blowout (going the whole hog back on earth) and it's reincarnation time.

My tentative suggestion would be that the afterlife scenarios we connect with from this life as reported  on this board are actually karmic creations brought into existence as above. Because they are not physical we (?) seem to have better access to higher states of awareness in them than in physical life.

One basic question that follows from this is that of how much control we might have over how much of this package of karma we reattach to and manifest when we reincarnate. Is our choice limited only to how we respond to it, or can we with assistance (addiction counselling?  ;)) and a degree of realisation choose to adjust the package of beliefs we go into and create our next life with? The hopelessly addicted (wholly non spiritual) presumably will be stuck with living out the lot with all the pain and suffering that entails.

The exceptions are said to be the realised people that have gotten over this apparently highly addictive package of beliefs/can handle separation from their karmic propensities/can handle the urge to reincarnate, and have started to remember what they truly are again - thus freeing themselves from the need for physical incarnation. They are able if they so choose to remain with Source outside of karmic influences. (many choose out of compassion to reincarnate anyway to help those still bound to physical life)

Viewed in totality you could say that there's two overlapping realities available to us in this life. C1 consciousness sees life exclusively from the point of view of the above addicted belief that physical existence is all that there is. Viewed from source this is just a dream or a belief bubble.

As we raise our consciousness in life we become able to elevate our awareness so that we increasingly can perceive from the perspective of Source too, although the problem is that when we get back to C1 we're stuck trying to do the impossible by explaining it using C1 language and concepts.

There seem to have been those ('holy' persons) who have chosen to live life with their awareness resting almost entirely with Source.

Realisation involves at least getting to the point where we know experientially that reality lies with Source, and not in C1, and as above no longer being bound to reincarnate. Such a person lives in the overlap.

Should this picture prove true the question of permanence of 'me' is all a matter of perspective. Yes, packages of karmic propensities cycle from life to life appearing to be individuals. So yes, there appears from one perspective to be reincarnation of a 'me'.

Yes there's an immortal piece of Source in there too, but it's in truth not anything that can be characterised as a 'me' in physical life terms. Buddhism uses terms like emptiness to try to get at it. Yet it (or at least a part of it) perhaps also cycles through physical existence until such time as it remembers what it truly is.

It's probably the case that this forgetting occurs for a reason, although not necessarily one  explainable in our C1 terms.

Having freed itself from physical reincarnation, this piece of Source proceeds on through a further series of levels until eventually it's fully reintegrated with the whole - perhaps taking with it only those aspects of knowledge gained through karmic experience that fulfill its purpose.

Presumably meaning that it's only the bit of Source that's truly immortal. That that part of the  personality (the karmic tendencies, the ego or apparent 'me' at C1 level) that's served its purpose will progressively be discarded.

Confused? It's only one view, it's mostly a restatement of teaching and as such is mostly an attempt to  fit a theory to very limited experience....

Hello Vajra. Below are some responses within brackets. I didn't respond to everything because I'm at work and have a limited amount of time.

We've discussed this at length, but never really reached any view that reconciles the 'soul' and 'no soul' views - the latter epitomised by the Buddhist view that there's nothing that continues permanently between reincarnations - that the apparent 'me' is in reality only an aggregate of happenings that temporarily align to create that appearance.

[Once a person starts communicating with a light being and seeing what such a light being is capable of, it hard to believe that such a being is nothing more than a collection of deluded aggregates that are destined to be destroyed. Rather, one finds that one is in touch with a being who has gone through enough learning experiences so it knows how to use energy in a controlled and intelligent way.

If one considers how beings occur at different levels, e.g., disks, planning intelligences, this supports the viewpoint of beings who have reached the point where they are in control of the creative energy they make use of, rather than creative energy being nothing more than someting that deludes them.]


I've been playing with this (am I a piece of Source/primordial awareness driving a convincing but ultimately unreal body through existence like a car, or a physical mind and body that happens to host a bit of Source?), and it strikes me (drawing on teaching and other's experience) that to try to explain my current take on it more clearly might be of interest.  

Life in this reality may (to list two common views from among among the lots of possibilities) be a chosen learning experience, or something we've got ourselves stuck in through belief in separation from Source. The latter put another way might be the result of our getting hung up on the above belief that 'me' is truly a 'real' physical entity living on Earth in space time.

[I believe that life is like an interactive movie. We take part in it so we can see what possibilities exist when it comes to the creative aspect of our being, and so we can see if any benefit can be derived by taking part in such an exploration.  If we consider this from the viewpoint of getting entangled within the movie, then life seems like a mistake.  Once we get to the point where we are no longer entangled by the movie we can use the lessons learned to our advantage.  A viewer gets defined by a movie only to the extent and for as long as a viewer allows itself to get defined by a movie. The knowledge that is gained can never be lost.

I believe that when people think in terms of being stuck, they view life too much from this side of the fence, rather than from the side a light being views life from.]

Buddhist (and I guess broader Eastern) teachings suggest that karma is the package of beliefs that results in mind creating this whole flow of reality, as well as at the 'me' level the physical body and the circumstances into which we are born, our tendencies, and the happenings we will be exposed to during our lives. This includes the whole package of beliefs that creates the ego or mistaken sense of self or 'me'.

Extra normal experience and teaching suggest that there's a 'piece' of Source or primordial mind in each of us - some of us can at times separate from the physical (karmic existence), and even temporarily transcend individuality to again experience Source.  

This piece of Source manifests characteristics like awareness, intuitive knowing, creativity and love - but it's not easily defined, and while its manifestations mix with and are easily drowned out by those of ego it's quite separate from it and from the karmically created sense of 'me' or self. Because of timelessness and the blurring of the boundaries between individuality and unity it can't easily be defined using our normal mind as a simple separate 'me' or 'part me' - it's perhaps a form of existence that's pretty much impossible to describe using our space/time based language and concepts.

[Either we view just a small part of the movie during any particular now, or we view the entire film. Which ever way we choose, the entire film is within us.

This inner us is alway connected to source because it is a part of source.  Once individual portions were given the ability to determine their own fate, their existence became a reality. For whatever reason energy can be used in a way so that numerous life histories can be created. Mixtures of energy cling to each other according to how they relate to each other.]

It doesn't have to reincarnate, but the problem (maybe not a problem?) is that in most cases it's at some point forgotten what it truly is, and instead identified wholly with existence as an individual time/space vehicle. (body and mind apparently living a physical life as a 'me') You could say that it's become so habituated to physicality and using language and space/time concepts that it finds it harder and harder to imagine the possibility of any other mode of existence.

[I figure that spirits need to reach the point where they are willing to see that they are a part of a greater self/disk/whatever name you like. They won't be able to completely remember who/what they are, until they are ready to make such a connection. Some spirits will need to go through some process of learning before they reach this stage.

When it comes to reincarnational goals, for the most part I believe such goals exist at greater self/disk level.  I believe these goals mostly pertain to lessons that still need to be accumulated, rather than an attachment to the physical World. I say this partly because disk level consciousness already exists at a level that is quite removed from the physical World.  There might also be certain patterns of mind that need to be worked out, and these patterns get worked out by selves/probes that are created by a disk. I say this with the understanding that any self which incarnates is only a very small part of an entire greater self/disk.

There might be some selves that reincarnate before rejoining a disk. Perhaps because such a self is really unhappy with what it accomplished and wants to contribute something more positive. I wonder about this though. If it is understood that because of the way this World is many selves are going to get caught up in a negative incarnation,  will the lessons gained be accepted for whatever merrit they contribute, even if this merrit takes the form of "what not to do."  It is important to remember that any life experience is just one small part of the film that is viewed.

There might be selves that return to greater self/disk and later on choose to reincarnate for some reason.  I suggest this simply because people like Bruce Moen have suggested this. I've been told differently with the messages I've received. I've been told that "each self incarnates only just one time."  Anything that needs to be taken care of is taken care of by succeeding greater self/disk members." Why the discrepency? I don't know. Whatever the case, I believe that each person needs to be responsible and do the best job he or she can, so there won't be any unpleasant surprises.]



The newly incarnating (first time around) bit of Source can probably choose the type of vehicle it creates/experiences physical existence through, but those that have been around lots of times before and have got caught up in the above belief/addiction are probably stuck with dragging the the latest  package of karmic propensities (beliefs) they have mistakenly attached themselves to with them - and hence they create another life based on them.

[The needs won't be based solely on what an individual self will need. They will be based on what a disk/greater self as a whole needs. It will also be a matter of what is needed beyond and individual disk's needs, since each disk takes part in the divine plan.]

They feel a need to reincarnate back into the physical, because while the karma initially separates  in the afterlife state the result is that after a short time they start feeling themselves an incomplete 'me' - as a result of no longer having the body and existence in the physical life they have come to regard as normal.

[Once a self reconnects to its greater self/disk, it will find that a oneness of mind exists. It may be that another part of its disk or even an affiliated disk already completed the lesson plan that it needs to learn. If not, a future self could take care of such lessons along with working out whatever lingering mind pattern needs to be worked out. Consider how in Bruce's third book he wrote about how he was provided with certain retriever traits before he incarnated.  Consider how Robert Monroe's I-there (disk) told him that his incarnation was the result of a mixture of traits that his I-there needed to incarnate. Consider what Thomas Sawyer said about reincarnation during his NDE account. In particular, the last paragraph:

"Thomas Sawyer learns some interesting facts from the light about reincarnation.

Reincarnation is not a linear thing. One of the problems in defining it is that there is no analogy to it. It is outside of time, yet we can't help but think of it in terms of the past and the future, and this incarnation. The whole story is so big and so involved.

Reincarnation is an opportunity to reach a goal. The goal is true self-realization. Self-realization is to know that you are a soul, a part of God, yet also the Whole. Perhaps no one has a very good image at all of his or her soul - the whole self. And they have no idea of what proportion their personality is in relationship to their soul.

As an example, a characteristic of your personality is one percent of all of your personality characteristics put together, and all of your personality characteristics make up your personality, and your personality is only about five percent of your soul, then we are blinding ourselves to 95 percent of the rest of our soul in order to reincarnate.

Reincarnation is an opportunity to evolve through many personalities. The definition of reincarnation is that your personality is who you are in your current lifetime, and that it can be reincarnated as an entirely different personality with the characteristics of the previous personality and previous personalities including even characteristics of another soul altogether. That is, characteristics of your present personality may be the reincarnation of other characteristics of personalities from your previous lifetimes as well as characteristics from personalities """""from other souls"""""."]

 
With the result that (as in the Bardo teachings of Tibetan Buddhism) they start the process of  reattaching to their karmic beliefs by creating in the afterlife (  I'll just nibble one chocolate biscuit!), and next thing get sucked into a blowout (going the whole hog back on earth) and it's reincarnation time.

My tentative suggestion would be that the afterlife scenarios we connect with from this life as reported  on this board are actually karmic creations brought into existence as above. Because they are not physical we (?) seem to have better access to higher states of awareness in them than in physical life.

One basic question that follows from this is that of how much control we might have over how much of this package of karma we reattach to and manifest when we reincarnate. Is our choice limited only to how we respond to it, or can we with assistance (addiction counselling?  ) and a degree of realisation choose to adjust the package of beliefs we go into and create our next life with? The hopelessly addicted (wholly non spiritual) presumably will be stuck with living out the lot with all the pain and suffering that entails.

[A lot of our limitations while physical are based on our body's biochemistry and neurological limitations. Initially some spirits might have a problem because they developed mind patterns that are based upon bodily influences. I wonder how long things such as a sex drive will stay in place when the hormones and sex organs that make sexuality possible no longer exist. Once a spirit finds its way out of such a limited way of thinking, it'll find that there are much greater ways of being fullfilled.]


The exceptions are said to be the realised people that have gotten over this apparently highly addictive package of beliefs/can handle separation from their karmic propensities/can handle the urge to reincarnate, and have started to remember what they truly are again - thus freeing themselves from the need for physical incarnation. They are able if they so choose to remain with Source outside of karmic influences. (many choose out of compassion to reincarnate anyway to help those still bound to physical life)

[Overcoming the influences of the body and this World while in the World is quite a task. I don't believe that most spirits need to do so while occupying a body, because this World was created more for learning purposes, rather than being a huge obstacle that has to be overcome. I believe that the spiritual goal of the human race exists on a more universal level rather than an individual level. The goal is to make this planet a place where it lives more according to love than it does, because right now too many negative incarnational possibilities/film scripts are available.]  

wrote on May 9^th, 2008 at 11:14am:

There seem to have been those ('holy' persons) who have chosen to live life with their awareness resting almost entirely with Source. Realisation involves at least getting to the point where we know experientially that reality lies with Source, and not in C1, and as above no longer being bound to reincarnate. Such a person lives in the overlap. Should this picture prove true the question of permanence of 'me' is all a matter of perspective. Yes, packages of karmic propensities cycle from life to life appearing to be individuals. So yes, there appears from one perspective to be reincarnation of a 'me'. Yes there's an immortal piece of Source in there too, but it's in truth not anything that can be characterised as a 'me' in physical life terms. Buddhism uses terms like emptiness to try to get at it. Yet it (or at least a part of it) perhaps also cycles through physical existence until such time as it remembers what it truly is. It's probably the case that this forgetting occurs for a reason, although not necessarily one  explainable in our C1 terms.

I italicized the line that speaks to me.

The forgetting -- there may be so many things about this forgetting that we simply will never understand while we are here. How would we explain our thoughts, feelings, history and civilization to an animal who does not share our language? How would an animal comprehend us in that way? It would be impossible. Some understanding is possible, but complete comprehension, here in C1, with the remaining abilities we have left in our modern world?

We share certain traits, my "soul" and I, but we are not alike.  I don't compare our C1 personalities with animals to be derogatory in any way. It just seems to be a good example to me.

We learn a good lesson by observing ourselves and how we project many of our own thoughts and emotions onto others, for our own purposes. And our own purposes shift and change continually. I am suspect of any opinion I have of the afterlife and, certainly, of reincarnation.

That being said, cool thoughts. I enjoyed them.

Varga,

The idea that we lose or identity or only retain a little of it when we merge with the Divine source seems to come up repeatedly. During my NDE, I remained “ME”, as did all my beloved passed over ones I met on the other side.

Yes is true that we progress and finally merge with God, like a separate unique molecules of individual awareness within the Great Ocean of composite awareness we call God.

This final state that I  experience for a brief subjective moment was so unimaginable blissful, peaceful happy and sublimely joyful that it simply cannot be adequately explained over here in the grey sleep like reality we now exist in as mortal humans.

But I repeat we remain ourselves. The alternate is just everlasting death. Total loss of self, what other term can one use?


alan

alan

Thanks guys.  :) I think the views you express are all supportable depending on how we conceive the reality we find ourselves in. When I posted I was trying for a fairly integrated picture based on the Eastern and Monroe influenced views I've heard, but on reflection it's probably all a bit pointless - and even counter productive. (just leads to getting hung up about belief systems)

To your point Blink on the unknowability of all of this. It seems to me on reflection too that the best we can hope to do is play with possible story lines for myths from our very limited physical life perspective.

The immortal words come to mind: 'what the bleep do we know....'

Language reflects the way our mind works, and the reality we imagine. But our C1 conscious  mind is so limited, and out of the infinite possibilities sees so little (seems only in fact to perceive what it can conceive or can describe) that I don't think we can possibly hope to reach a view that's worth arguing about.

My sense is that there's not much room for beliefs in this space. In that we can believe what we like, but whatever it is it's probably only going to become an impediment to progress in that it'll only cause us to perceive selectively.

The whole deal is like trying to figure out a Rubik's cube of infinite dimensions. Letting go of beliefs, or at least using them only as stepping stones to be discarded when we get to the stage of direct perception and knowing seems to be the game.

Mind it seems extends from here to Source/Unity/God, with the option for awareness (depending on the belief systems programming it) to be placed anywhere on the continuum. From a view (if we draw on some of the bits of experience we and others report) that leads to its naively thinking it's only a part of a physical and independently existing me, through becoming a me that can touch the edges of the spiritual/collective/no space/no time realm while accessing the whole evolutionary/past life script, through multiple differing realities, and on to eventually to Source where omniscience and freedom from beliefs make possible absolutely anything.

With the added complexity that results from time being only a local perception (it's seemingly all happening at once), and from the successive seemingly separate realms (the separations exist only as a matter of perception) actually being parts of an infinite continuum.

Buddhism of course suggests that it's this tendency to see things as separate (me, all the other things) that leads to the pain we experience in this existence - that this is the core lesson we're required to learn at this level.

But that too is presumably just one view. The reality is presumably that there's an infinite number of purposes in play at an infinite number of levels, all neatly dovetailed to feed whatever purpose God or Source has for it all...

Hi all     I have to say that you are who you are, when you cross over as my dad aint changed or i would not recognise him through a medium and reincarnation is definetly not on my agenda when i cross over, as i no way am coming back to this sad excuse for a world and as God is my witness i have come out of my body and my spirit looked pale yellow so it is definetly a fact our spirit, which we have all got comes out when we die.

Love and God bless    love juditha                    

How else did your spirit look, Juditha? I mean, what, sort of, texture was it, and how did you comprehend it? Like, how did you feel when you saw it?

love, b

Hi blink  I felt amazed when i saw my spirit,there was the proof in front of me as i always beleived but to witness it actually happen was great.
When it happened i had a really loud vibration in my head ,which i had never experienced before and as this vibration started my spirit came out parrellel to my body as i was laying down at the time and i was looking at my spirit and it was beautiful and a very pale yellow colour and it looked what i would describle as like a shimmering satin texture but not heavy looking like satin on earth,my spirit was laying half way across my body and it proved so much that our spirit really does exist and then i just went back into my body.
 That's why  i've used God as my witness here,who i would never use unless i was telling the ultimate truth as i would be to afraid to use God as my witness if i was lieing.Because i wanted to prove on here that it is all fact.

Love and God bless       love juditha

Judithia,

You said,


Quote:

Hi blink  I felt amazed when i saw my spirit,there was the proof in front of me as i always beleived but to witness it actually happen was great. When it happened i had a really loud vibration in my head ,which i had never experienced before and as this vibration started my spirit came out parrellel to my body as i was laying down at the time and i was looking at my spirit and it was beautiful and a very pale yellow colour and it looked what i would describle as like a shimmering satin texture but not heavy looking like satin on earth,my spirit was laying half way across my body and it proved so much that our spirit really does exist and then i just went back into my body.  That's why  i've used God as my witness here,who i would never use unless i was telling the ultimate truth as i would be to afraid to use God as my witness if i was lieing.Because i wanted to prove on here that it is all fact. Love and God bless       love juditha

Yes dear you had the beginning of a profound conscious out of body experience as the vibration or buzzing indicates. . Perhaps you should have waited and let the event continue and you might of experience things even more beautiful than you did.

love

alan

Alan -

You mentioned briefly in your post before last about your NDE.

Have you put a description of the experience elsewhere on this Board? - I would be very interested to read of it!

Best wishes,

Alfred

Alfred,

I posted it as a personal message  to you as I did not want to repeat the post.

alan

Interesting thread Ian. I'm trying to condense the many questions arising from it into just one question but I think I shall fail!  :)
but if I tried the question always ends up Who and What Are We?

This who and what are we question is at the top of Bruce's beginning statements in his books and is the thesis for most all book I read. perhaps we learn the answers by relating together so thanks for the post.

its for sure my tree doesn't talk back to me much about such things..yet it does talk.

In regards to higher self and lower self, we might think in those terms for simplicity of communication. You and I usually talk of the ego as the lower self, while we might call the ego the personality as well.

I believe personality is not the true eternal self, but an acquisition of the true self, or disc self could be pertaining to the Unlimited self. The creative Self. C1 refers to a limited type of focus. Limited, but not in a negative sense. If we're thinking of the purpose of living, or the meaning to be derived from a life, in order to accomplish any objective in life a certain narrowed viewpoint, a point of concentration is necessary. ELS is an objective oriented system, although the beginner here often complains the reverse, that they are subjected to the limited confines of the brain apparatus and collective society, which, such society you've noticed is also having a limited viewpoint.
the purpose and meaning even Monroe was not able to put sufficiently into words, of the graduates who came off this planet..only that they were satisfied, he implied.
Such satisfaction we might all wish as well..I simply call it attainment of a peace of mind which passes understanding because it is not accessible to intellectual debate or describable in language, such language can not achieve communication of what peace does and is, as a feeling, as it's a way of being rather than a feeling.

Focus is like being the probe of higher self, disc. we as our higher self plan with family members (disc selves) to play certain roles in a drama, then plunge into it and play it out, forgetting who we were before, often changing roles in subsequent lives to learn certain things in our evolvement back into our wholeness.  Karma or accepted belief patterns is not a penalty in the sense that nobody is forced into being a human passing here..but I know sometimes it can feel like we just entered the hot fires of hell..is the reason for suicide..I think in some cases, the cry for help went unanswered and these are not held in recrimination once they pass back to spirit. they are just shown what could have been done to avoid bailing out.

the part of me which did an impulsive deed to another, is a character flaw I had which I wished to rectify from another time period. I carried this part of me within my now identity, and so for simplicity, I must own this other me as a whole, complete personality/ego, otherwise I would not have been able to see her as somebody else who did the deed, as that would be then, not taking responsibility for my actions and shucking them off on some other person that I was.

You either did the deed, or you didn't do the deed. I was in error as I was too passionate in my love of the people. I also viewed several other lives where I defended people or ideals. I carried the same traits life to life. I was still not controlling my nature, and acted in reactionary terms, possessed by the familiar ego shortcomings.

so we might say the incarnating is to learn to control one's reactionary propensity, where physical harm is done to another, even if shooting someone just to watch them die, seems like fun. you pay the price sooner or later.
the irony is that the other party whom was the victim, and yourself agree to come back and play a different role in order to learn to control the passions and get back to the love part. For these victims, they are agreed in the plot beforehand of what might take place for them, if they are not doing right by others and also causing their own demise, or that possibility..for nothing is absolute in the plan..it's lets jump in and try to stick to the plan of waking up here, but we are going to have to ask for assistance to totally wake up, as evidenced violence is still seen as a solution today.

the simple viewpoint is for me to not make it complicated with the way a singular ego can continue to question and yet never be satisfied until it finally gains it's own communication with source which automatically makes it quiet down.
communication with Source is the very essence of being loved and of joining as this Love which only welcomes even the worst of us, as we perceive ourselves as being "bad."
there has never been a word to replace the meaning of grace descending. and on the just and unjust.

the main benefit to viewing other lives and dealing with that, is the appreciation gained for that particular life, for each ego and personality, as I see it, is continuing within it's own dimension of actuality, and yet as part of the total disc, and all are mine, all are my unlimited being.

this appreciation promotes one to a wish to promote others in their struggle to understand, we are all one, and we are the essence of Love.

Thanks Alysia, it's a complex subject, and one that triggers fears about the survival of the me/personality which inevitably slant our thinking. And that's before issues of language and individual conditioning  further confuse the picture.

Not to mention that we are left trying to use mostly our relativistic intellect to make sense of what is probably largely an absolute matter - even if we can stumble to one supportable view of what's going on it's probably only a tiny part of the overall.

I think your 'who am I' question is a nice way of encapsulating the debate. There's certainly been some  highly regarded teachers that have suggested that. The answer mind you may suggest that it's nothing to do with a personalised 'me' or 'I'.

Maybe the simple answer to the associated 'why' (or what's going on) is that it's a  generalised testing of the primacy of love in the most adverse circumstances imaginable. (a reality where the delusion of individual self-hood holds sway)

My personal inclination is along the lines of what you wrote (which is a fairly traditional view) , but I try not to turn it into a belief. That the ego/personality is only the operating software for the physical entity and the reality that we temporarily inhabit - but that because it's hard to separate it's outputs from those of source/higher self that we mistake the physical and its operating software for 'me'.

But that the true 'me' is as you say really the higher mind/disc/piece of source existing outside of this space/ time reality. That what ultimately survives is basically this and its payload of the results/attributes of the experience.

Even this view may demonstrate bias. We know the body dies. My sense is that the personality in the form it manifested here remains on the shelf in the afterlife and available for use in some way or another (perhaps the attributes are extracted for use by another incarnation, perhaps it's only a set of problems to be adopted by and worked by the next piece of Source going through into existence), but does not ultimately survive.

There are fairly clear signs in for example the bardo teachings that we separate from personality (karma) after death, but that somehow we (or something else) reconnects with it to be reborn.

I'm not sure about re-incarnation in the way its commonly described either, in that the quantum science outlined in a book like The Field suggests that since time/space is only a local phenomenon we could just as easily be accessing the past/future lives of ourselves or others, or past personalities (like the discarded shells). The theory that sequential reincarnation on a timeline of a personalised me takes place may include quite a lot of ego centric wishful thinking.

My suspicion is that we are due to a personality centric viewpoint inclined to construct theories of the survival of personality around the data points we access through afterlife and other non-ordinary experience. Which perhaps explains why the Eastern traditions don't equate psychic abilities with realisation.

It's just as possible that the disc/source arranges for successive emanations to adopt personality shells/attributes/problem sets from other lives and sends them (with a large measure of forgetting) into a physical life which for it is only a virtual reality - that these emanations don't amount to individual reincarnations of a 'me personality' in any of the ways conceived by our conceptual mind.

How this is seen is all a matter of viewpoint. The personality we consider 'me' may in fact be in a situation rather like that of the doomed android in Blade Runner. It looks like a person, behaves like a person, maybe even feels like a person, but is in the end maybe only a programme.

Until we can truly answer the 'who am I?' question we can never be sure if it's a person or a machine.

This all brings me back to what I suspect is the essential issue in progress towards realisation - that what matters is dropping the attempts to force our conceptual and biased views on reality and going with the flow. On the basis that whatever the reality is we'll find out about it in due course, and that provided we don't allow delusional beliefs to interfere we'll be just fine....

Can I add my opinion?

My own experiences and travels have showed me that in this great eternal cycle of life we must progress though maybe many life spans. This was revealed to me that we progress through many realms, dimensions and other planes outside our earthly awareness or memory, and must go through the many necessary rivers of forgetfulness.

In what I call the rivers of forgetfulness, we deposited all the memories into the amalgamated ocean of memories, where we will eventually combine with our higher selves becoming and remembering the great beings we really are...

The final river I the “Great River of Recall”, where we combine all these many life memories into the Great Source we mostly call God.

At this stage, strange at it seems we remember our individuality, but have are also have all the power and intellect of the composite mind of all other living beings as well as that of the Source or God. While we are not God because God can now trust us, we can exercise Godlike powers of Co-creators. Guys this is so wonderful euphoric and unimaginably awesome that I cant wait, can you.

Some might say that Alan is letting his imagination get the better of him. But out there in unimaginable vast great of all existence, we simply cannot imagine with our still earthly restricted mind anything that is impossible.

Some would say in horror that I am blaspheming, but I know I am not because during my NDE I had this exact experience, be it briefly, where I experience the absolute euphoria of knowing everything and feeling all-powerful..

Now I have used the term “Final”  only in the sense of the finality of that "Stage" in great wheel in the never-ending ceaseless progress and process of creation.

I hope I have not got ahead of myself but that is my own input for what it is worth

alan  

It seems to me Alan that blasphemy only exists as a concept in the minds of those intent on controlling what's deemed 'truth' for personal advantage.  That the reality is that far from there being a problem with our exploring and trying to make sense of it it's actually a great deal of why we are here.

Imagination is likewise to me the creative part of the learning process - without it there could only be the stasis of personalities with fixed viewpoints and beliefs circling ad infinitum.

It only becomes a problem if out of ego we lock down what we imagine into a belief system, and out of fear we attempt to defend and force it on others. We probably need to be a little wary of how we interpret what we perceive too, in that mind seems to have a way of causing us to see what we want to see.

The view that individuality is only a point of view we can choose to adopt at times, and that with progress ever higher levels of integration and realisation take place feels right to me too though. As does the idea that it's not an either/or situation - one and all is possible, and probably all at once.

My own experience while not perhaps as graphic as yours has likewise left me knowing that personality   is at best just a vantage point, and that the thinking/conceptual mind is a part of this existence but far from the whole.

Quite how it all hangs together as a system I can't tie down though.

Maybe the way we experience life and individual existence is like the way a novice in a debating society is  required to argue a from a viewpoint that's not his real one, only in our case the forgetting you mention results in 100% identification with our brief....

Varga,


Quote:

Maybe the way we experience life and individual existence is like the way a novice in a debating society is  required to argue a from a viewpoint that's not his real one, only in our case the forgetting you mention results in 100% identification with our brief

Yes, we all perceive reality from different angles, viewpoints, time, location and space. So we will express things differently because each of us re beautiful thought creations from the mind of God.

And it is true, that the best all we can do is try to express the wonder here as mortals on earth, and that at best will fall far short of they almost infinite information in existence.

Your higher self I referred to in previous post

I, the I AM of you, bring to you this My Message, as I have brought to you everything in life, your own True Self, AM The Teacher for you, you are your own teacher..

They are but the expression of your Being, as you are the expression of My Being; they are but phases of your human personality, as You are a phase of the Divine Impersonality.

Now you may not even yet know I AM, or believe that I AM really you, or that I AM likewise your brother and your sister, and that you are all parts of the "GODHEAD"

Now you may not even yet know I AM, or believe that I AM really you, or that I AM likewise your brother and your sister, and that you are all parts of Me and One with Me.

You may not realize that the Souls of you and your brother and sister, the only real and imperishable parts of the mortal you, are but different phases of Me in expression in what is called existence

You are MY IDEA who am I who Are you? "You are your own idea Think about this fact"

The best respect is self respect, you are an expression of the Divine Mind


Learning and progressing is an everlasting process through infinite planes upward towards God or any term you would like to refer to that ultimate reality.


Gosh! I hope this is not coming over in a convoluted way, if yes I will give it another attempt.




alan  

That's a very nice and almost poetic expression Alan of the 'now you see it, now you don't aspect that seems to surround questions of individuality and universality - it points up very nicely the likely futility of getting stuck on any single perspective.

Not at all convoluted. ( ;) that's my space)

My sense is that it's all mind bogglingly multidimensional. Not only are we required to using empathy and intellect eventually drop selfishness so we can slide between seeing all the multiple perspectives capable of adoption by individuals in C1 (normal physical reality) consciousness, we are also probably required to eventually drop belief in an individual self and eventually even in the absolute nature of any perceived reality to become able to transition up and down the continuum of levels of consciousness that take us from individuality to God/source.

It seems to be so much about coming to rest in the natural state - about connecting with the wisdom available from our true selves and dropping all of our conditioned beliefs so that the above becomes possible.

That as your piece suggests eventually requires dropping all teachers and all paths. Even in the earliest stages we seem to be required to take responsibility for our own path - start leaning any any reading ready made belief system and almost all progress stops.

And that's only from the vantage point enjoyed by a physical human. It probably grows lots more complexity as we move on to other existences.....

Are we ever going to grow up and free ourselves from religious dogma?  I hear people say all over the place that they are free from religion and then talk about the same concepts just using different words.  Mommy, Daddy God is always there doing it all.  I wonder if we will ever take responsibility for ourselves.
It goes like this over and over.  Let us say my name is Danielle.  Well, somehow Danielle finds herself down here trying to learn how to be good.  (How did she get bad in the first place?)  Well, she must have been born into sin, silly.  So when she learns there is no hell or she has paid off her debts with karma, she finds redemption and rises up to live with daddy forever.
Karma was an eastern dogma brought to the west from the likes of Blavatsky and caught on and became the new-age punishment.

Maybe we just simply wake-up.  We find out who we truly are and see this reality as having been a dream.  No matter whether we have made it to level 111, it's still all part of the dream.  And when all of ourselves are called back by ourself to our disk, we start a whole different dream.

We are consciousness with a huge and wonderful imagination.  So we may dream more of this reality or wake up and start an entirely new dream.  It's just experience.

My 2cents worth.  PUL  SHSS   :-*

I think we are still talking about self realization, or enlightenment, thus the end of suffering.

I too view life as a dream like quality when I see I'm not who I was yesterday, let alone who I was in another century. I think we are moving out of religious dogma as a whole, but still, we need a new language in that case. what I think about that is the marriage of science and religion produces in time the new language.

Vajra, my dog is evolving on the other side. She is still with the same form as I knew her to be. this is an experience I had with her, which is not your experience I know and so I won't be believed by everyone that I meet with her, and she is like an extension of my consciousness.
I am agreeing with you the development of psychic abilities is not an indication that the psychic is necessarily enlightened, but psychics would indicate that all life is in a process of evolution and that same process is the act of becoming more unlimited, and also we can then begin remembering our first advents within matter.

Imagination is a creative process. I believe Einstein attained enlightenment simply from this one statement I quote: "Imagination is more important than knowledge."

Religions are belief systems..but they are limited in the concepts they point to, and they develop in a society because there was a need for something to believe in other than waking up in the morning, going to a boring job perhaps and inspersed in there is the question "what's going on?"

or to illustrate further "who am I?"  in the end, it's you yourself decides who you are and what is possible and what is impossible.
Alan, it is exciting what is happening to you. I can see you are not limiting yourself within your beliefs.

didn't you have an NDE?  People who have, they are not necessarily psychic but I do believe they come back specifically to tell the others about the other side as best they can.

as to what it is that survives...during my occassion where I died, as it was entirely real to me, at the same time tailor made to my studies and ways of thinking, what survived was a sense of adventure, an enthusiasm trait, a willingness to walk into the unknown, and a trust that something was taking care of me despite I had forgotten my source and felt alone on occassion.

the source, lo and behold was the very space I existed in. it had an intelligence built into it, or an awareness of "me."
This I call PUL, God, Source, Life itself, Higher Self, Disc, I existed in a body of space, an individual, a spark, alive and safe and whole, of one piece and with absolutely no fear, only pure joy and totally alive.

Alan knows this. I am flesh and blood temporarily and grateful I am alive because I finished the main intentions for incarnating, and that's the moment I seemed to die and had a marvelous time in that space of freedom from my lesson plan.
I know who is my teacher, my best friend, all these roles you can think of, and it has nothing to do with religion as the collective view it.
we life and move within the very substance of life principle, we fragmented and we come back together at some point. We have nothing to lose by exploring the depths of our own minds and imaginations.

everyone is equally within Love and equally loved. Source is PUL. Intelligent, all pervasive Energy consciousness individualized. all knowing and has also been called the Creator.

Dropping our grasping after beliefs (our getting so much invested in them that we fear any opening to change) is for sure he big deal I think SHSS, not just about religion but also the societal stuff like for example that that inculcates an unthinking deference to authority.

To hang on to beliefs that don't serve us, that conflict with the natural state of things is to as Alysia says invite suffering into our lives.

Karma is perhaps a consequence of this. It can very easily get convoluted into a sinners and good guys issue, which in my view is again a projection of false beliefs on to life. I prefer the view that life has a natural flow, that we stay free of negative karma if we instead of trying to force our beliefs on to reality stay aligned with this.

That we create negative karma (unpleasant practical consequences) when we get delusional, pig headed or just don't know what's the right action in a given situation.

Karma is arguably the feedback mechanism that enables us to learn in life.

Just in case of misunderstanding I wasn't suggesting that psychic ability isn't important Alysia, it's actually the gateway to finding out through experience that reality is very different to how it appears when viewed simplistically. I don't have the ability or experience of some of you guys, but I've been lucky enough to experience enough to know as TMI say I'm so to speak a lot more than my physical body and the reality it exists in.

I suppose though that it can go wrong if we draw wrong conclusions that we go on to invest belief in - and the fear of loss of personality seems to be one cause of this. Problems may follow if it's misused or runs ahead of our ability to use positively the insight it provides.

Possibilities range from beliefs that block our opening, to use of abilities for wrongdoing.

Nor was I suggesting that there's not important stuff happening in the afterlife - I've had enough contact by various means from deceased people to know that they are still around. It's just that there's freedom in the scientific perspectives you mention for other possibilities to be going down as well as the models suggested by TMI and the great traditions - which leaves me able to waffle about possibilities, but unsure as to what the reality might actually be....

Hi LaffingRain,

Sorry I missed the chat, what a day I had.  Anyway I wanted to clear a few things up that I said because I am very bad at getting my points over. Goodness knows I try.  When I say dreams or imagination, I am talking of real reality.  I am not saying oh this is just fantasy or something unreal.  This reality is very real for the time being, but I think we will have other types of realities also that are very real.  I take my dreams and imagination very seriously in a humorous way.
I believe in simultaneous time and oh boy!  Some of the beings I've seen.  I don't think we will be humans forever.
I am also not an atheist, but I get upset that God or All That Is has been made out to be a monster.

So I will say this another way.  When we get through with this experience, however long that takes our individual consciousness lives on although connected to other consciousnesses and will have other experiences.

Anyway, just sharing my view which is always subject to change.  PUL   :)

Hi Vajra,

We must have posted at the same time.  I didn't mean to skip over you.

PUL   :-*

:-* :-* AOK too....

I could have used more people in the chat room, so sorry you missed it too Shss. there was a young man asked me a question and for the first time in my life I ended up speechless... ;D
he asked me if he could make an animal or a human on the other side... :o

I'm sure some of you folks have ideas about that we could have knocked around...
btw Shss, if you want to express about what you've seen, you have my undivided attention, and if anyone jumps you I will ask them to be nice.  ;)

the main thing I like to see here is freedom to say what we want, without being mean to someone or calling them names, or labels...as explorers of the inner nature and out of time explorations as well, there is just no telling what we have seen and done, and so we are talking, not forcing an issue.

love is the password

Ian, I've been reading a new slant on an old idea..karma. Tolle, he wrote the popular book A New Earth. In it he says there is a collective pain body, as well a personal pain body.

I liken what he says to the collective area of consensus agreement that the Earth is flat, for instance, or that death and taxes are absolutes. for instance I no longer pay taxes nor do I believe I will die.

ok, I still pay gasoline tax.  :D

the trick is to my perceptions, not to pursue enlightenment as an objective, but to take a look at the pain body and heal the pain. physician heal thyself idea. pain in the body for instance is usually a blockage, if we remove the blockage, either with a doctors help or with a practioner or just with a natural talent of shifing our mental horizons, we begin to allow the blood to flow into those areas which were blocked.

we can treat the symptom and often do, buying time. but to find the root of pain, at it's inception, that is known as preventative medicine. I think that's where we are headed in the future.

I'm not saying the body holds the illness, I'm saying the body is a mirror of what you think and believe about yourself.

a most useful vehicle of consciousness and learning then.

Alyaia and others


Quote:

could have used more people in the chat room, so sorry you missed it too Shss. there was a young man asked me a question and for the first time in my life I ended up speechless...   he asked me if he could make an animal or a human on the other side

Why not but yes it is a startling thought, but if the truth is that we eventually merge with Source or the Godmind and have all its powers at our deposal then we must be able to create.

It is nice to read about your dog, I know my beloved dogs are over on the other side. In some ways dogs are more advanced souls than humans, from them we get requited love  with no conditions, the just love us warts and all.

alan

:) There's a few cats I'm looking forward to meeting again too. Not to mention several still around that are very good friends and that have helped me a lot. (have been and are a really calming and centering influence through difficult times)

They have somehow been involved in several varieties of quite powerful experience too. That said I'm sure they could just as easily have manifested as something else - that their 'catness' was a lot to do with my own orientation.

My experience has mirrored what you say Alysia about the body expressing our pain as illnesses and other problems - I've had several instances of releasing stuff with immediate physical consequences -  pain, gut function, postural issues, sense of smell and so on.

UG Krishnamurti writing about his enlightenment experience talks of major changes to his skin, all his senses, the movement of joints, need for sleep along with many varieties of experience.

So it seems fairly clear that mind can in a very direct and short term way by energetic means influence the physical body, maybe even that the choice to manifest a body in a particular form eventually as Alan says becomes optional.

Tolle has a lovely way of conveying stuff in very accessible terms I think. It seems clear that when we  experience pain and try to push it away from us/suppress it that we do create a 'pain body' - probably one that has an existence that follows us after death.

This is the same idea I think as the creation of gods (the result of our grasping after 'nice' stuff) and demons (trying to distance ourselves from 'nasty' stuff) in Tibetan Buddhist teaching that I've written about before - the thinking is that our mind creates them and they live off our energy. Both are harmful.

Big deal stuff like say major childhood traumas or major obsessions (like the pursuit of power) can become enormous but remain suppressed, therefore behaving as unconscious energy draws.

Chod is the practice used to send love to and re-integrate them as they otherwise make us ill - there's been some very good results recorded as a result of AIDS patients using it for example.

All of this starts to sound very like karma, but as SHSS says there seems to be a lot talked on the topic that swings it back conceptually into a sinners/good guys space which is not what it's about. Quite how it all works at the systems level is difficult to figure out though, especially given the complexities of the 'who am I' question.

;) Luckily it's usually possible to float the most 'outrageous' (in conventional terms) ideas here for discussion without drawing any sort of negativity...

Varga,


Quote:

Tolle has a lovely way of conveying stuff in very accessible terms I think. It seems clear that when we  experience pain and try to push it away from us/suppress it that we do create a 'pain body' - probably one that has an existence that follows us after death.

Sometimes the pain we feel is not our own subjective pain, but we are experiencing the objective pain and need of another person.

This is when we can all do healing by thinking about who is in need of it I did for Bets recently. We are all healers and this gift of sensing other needs in our physical bodies, even in animals can have remarable positive results as I am sure Alysia knows.

alan

Hi Ian and all. as regarding the pain body and it's relation to karmic principles, we need to do as Sshs suggests to go beyond karmic implications, or try to do that.

one of the ways I began doing that is to let go of a belief in Murphy's law. (Anything that can go wrong will)  another way of believing in Murphy's law is a mindset which experiences a major string of what is seen as good luck. automatically when something really great happened in my life, I started looking over my shoulder for bad luck to follow, or to plummet to level I was used to again. Before, I used to say when bad things happen, they happen in threes.

this came true. but I stopped those beliefs because I was producing their outpicturing, to be creative that way. things still break down, but it's no longer "wrong" that they break down. its just what is happening, what is, and you just go ahead and fix it if possible, or ask another to fix it.

so we may see in the human body as a cell is dying, it is being replaced also by a new cell.

the pain body might be explained as holding unto something that is fading away of necessity, like holding unto yesterday because a fear exists of the future, which is silly, as the future hasn't happened yet. or I should say manifest reality is in our hands.

speaking of the white hat versus the black hat and we all want the good guy to win. I see the two players as One Act, in agreement on spirit levels, so that next time, the good guy is the bad guy perhaps. an example is Robin Hood, doing something considered bad in order to produce good.
all this is to express how we are not players doing a solo run here.
the performer on stage would not be much without the audience and the applause can either be addictive or can cause a soul to even graduate ELS with the audience's help towards that.
but as I see it, you cannot separate the performer from the fan. it's a joining.

the same with a relationship between two people who join. either in a contract or just live together, is a joining. from out of the relationship is born a product of the joining, a spiritual product.
here maybe the product is seen as a child is born from the union.
I'm thinking in terms of PUL is a product that changes the world.
then I'm thinking of how creative a substance is doubts.

and I'm thinking doubts is uncertainty, and is a type of suppressed fear, the pain body.
then I'm thinking where there is love, there is no possibility of fear being in the same space.

I can totally relate to what SHSS is saying.  I mean, how do we know if all of this isn't just our imagination?  Are we gods to our own existence?  As I sit here in this room is there anything outside of what I think I can visually see?  I've had dreams that have used ever one of my five senses.  I created my dream, am I creating the rest of it?  Is this just a dream?  Like SHSS asks, is the next level another dream?  Sometimes I feel like this life is the Twilight Zone.  Or an episode of "Lost"...flashbacks, flash-forwards, time travel, present time... :-/  

thistle wrote on May 20^th, 2008 at 4:31pm:

I can totally relate to what SHSS is saying.  I mean, how do we know if all of this isn't just our imagination?  Are we gods to our own existence?  As I sit here in this room is there anything outside of what I think I can visually see?  I've had dreams that have used ever one of my five senses.  I created my dream, am I creating the rest of it?  Is this just a dream?  Like SHSS asks, is the next level another dream?  Sometimes I feel like this life is the Twilight Zone.  Or an episode of "Lost"...flashbacks, flash-forwards, time travel, present time... :-/

I relate well with Shss too Michelle. my belief is that everything is a belief.and that beliefs change as we go along. I see the imagination as a very creative aspect of ourselves. if you cannot imagine something, it simply cannot happen.
U could look at it that we are fragments of God. Some books say we are gods. a good friend of mine (nobody on this board) says he is god and that he is invulnerable. I think I love him but perhaps, in the end, even he will be forced to admit he did not create himself, therefore something else created him, unless we believe in accidents of creation.

I used all 5 senses in dreams too, then I don't consider that a dream. the way we establish that it's real is through the 5 senses, but there's also a 6th sense, the 3rd eye so called, that has atrophied and is now being re-worked to health again. my belief again, but I do a lot studies, I don't have a job, I just study all day. I think we are here to first dream it, then create it.
as best as I can determine, if you don't have a dream, u start to go onto the death transistion, where it can seem like more dreaming is taking place, but if we wake up first here, we are surely awakened already on the nonphysical level.

LaffingRain it's all so complicated.  I guess it has to be in order for us to grow.  If the roots of a tree get everything they need near the surface they won't grow down and the tree will never be strong enough to withstand the elements.  It's our growth of spirit that makes us strong.  At least that's how I see it at this moment in time.   :)

I think, therefore I am.  But what am I?   :-?

well, lol, you somebody I'm glad to talk to! :)  and surely more than 3 ounces of minerals, what the body can be reduced to.

:) As you've quoted before Alysia: 'with our minds we make the world'.

Karma or damaging beliefs can be dropped and don't have to follow us around. That's what the Chod technique is about.

But the awkward part of all of this is that most of our beliefs are the result of early or even prior life experience, are buried at levels well below the subconscious, and consequently are not easily brought into awareness.

There's also the little matter of what constitutes a belief. We're conditioned to think of them as views we apply to situations occurring in the 'real' physical world. But a quick reading of 'The Field' by Lynne McTaggart or better still 'The New Physics of Healing' by Deepak Chopra points out clearly that the entire reality we experience (ourself, and the reality we find ourself in and our view of this) is in fact all one great big belief system.

That we very soon after birth (maybe even before) are conditioned by experience into deciding the sort of reality we're going to perceive. This is only one possibility out of an infinite number. But once this process takes place our every effort  is to only see what we've decided we should see. Or as before 'what the thinker thinks the prover proves'.

This is not just conjecture. It's a 100% logical consequence of quantum theory, and has been demonstrated time and time again experimentally since way back. It's just that medicine and science is the general sense have not so far managed to adjust their preconceptions enough to take this on board, and so are stuck in materialistic views.

This I suspect all means that while yes, we can choose to drop the specific beliefs we can bring into awareness that it takes a rather more comprehensive or universal dropping of beliefs (realisation) to deal with them all.

With the result that those beliefs we're not aware of will function to all appearances like external forces determining our lives. Much like the traditional view of karma.. ..

Hi Ian, there is a time though, and you have probably stumbled upon this state of mind occassionally, from what I've read of your posts, where your subconscious beliefs are exposed into the conscious, and in that moment you can dialogue with yourself.
What has worked for me, it's not so much dropping the belief or resisting it, as it is an inner dialogue with the belief itself.  Just the awareness that I now know I have believed that was true, is enough to decide not to believe it anymore, if it has not done anything for my welfare. So I will say, "thank you for your service to me, now I am going to retire you."

this way you are not resisting your belief or making yourself fearful to fight it. Just a simple I choose to believe something else now.
I don't think we are the sum total of what we believe. I don't think we are our emotions either. the emotions of perhaps negative, they are not our being either.
they are bodies the soul essence uses to gather experience with.

there will come a time you will feel greater life force within, but it has nothing to do with feeling love all the time, rather it's a lack of negativity life force, so there is only livliness, or life abundant, vitality.

but before this occurs theres a period of observing yourself on the hour. You can do this exercise to become more aware of the life force within you, the vital you, by every hour stopping what you are doing for just a second and asking yourself "How am I feeling this very moment?"

whether it's nervous, happy, sad, worried, preoccupied, wishful, theres many little emotions to become aware which one is active. watch yourself, how one time you feel good, then something happens to ruin the feeling. then just be aware of how you buzz throughout the day.

after some practice, some are quicker to get it than others, your subconscious begins to feed your belief systems into the conscious and you begin to choose your reality rather than feel as if you are a programmed brain, has to act from a program. you don't. self expression will become freer.

a lot of people don't know this, but happiness is merely a choice. it basically has not much to do with what's happening in the world externally.

I have faith in you, if that helps, you have a fine mind, it's just that right now many of us are being given information overload with the energies upon the Earth, forcing us to grow into fuller expressions of our true selves. It's the shift in consciousness I like to call it, and when the going gets tough, the tough get going. I guess that's about it in a nutshell! love to you, you've already started your journey.

Hi Vajra and friends,

Going back to Vajra's initial post, I would make the following observations:

At the most relaxed yet focused state of meditation, there is in fact a feeling of merging with the "all that is" (Source), and yet, we could also define that state not as a loss, but as a state of pure perception.  Incredibly, one finds that our the conscious mind is still there.   The "I" may be merged with the "all," and yet there is what I have called "me", my conscious awareness.  And behold, it is not gone; it is more clear than ever.  

In this state, I have not lost my perspective and picked up the perspective of everyone else.  The humbling and awe-inspiring realization is that, no, my individual perception is still there.  Is this an ego-based delusion?   In my experience, as dualistic as it sounds, the answer is - No.  I am there, able to observe everything.  I am thought, and I can perceive.  This is what Descartes wrote of.  I think, therefore, I am.  It is so simple; so basic.  

In this deeply relaxed state, where we feel a part of everything, we are at our most relaxed, yet most powerful.  Suggestions given to the physical vehicle during this state tend to manifest most powerfully into our reality within the near future.  This is the basis for magic and shamanism over the centuries.  Our thought in this state is powerfully creative - a particularly good way to heal ourselves and others.  I have experienced this firsthand.  Surprisingly, I have had no urge at all to abuse this power or to use it for personal indulgence.  I think that with our understanding of our true nature, the petty achievements in the physical and the pull of seductive karma weaken.

So at our core, we still exist as thought, perception, and creative beings.  Am I still Matthew, in the realm of thought?  Will I forget my experiences in the earth plane in the spiritual realm?  Hmmmmm......of course I don't know the answer to that question, but I suspect that we have choice and free will here.  My choices will dictate my state of consciousness and activities.  Vajra suggested that creation in the afterlife may be a result of karma and perhaps even false belief systems separating Source from itself there.  I agree with this, in part.

I find, in introspective meditation that stripped away of physical concerns, I am pure thought.  I am stunned, in some ways to find that I still exist.  My thought is NOT dependent on karma or illusion.  I am simply because I am - an almost divine-like statement, but true nonetheless.  At my core, I am pure perception and thought, but not mindless perception.  And as such, I choose where to take it from there.

From some perspectives, following the choices of pure thought may appear to willingly separate ourselves from God.  This is true if we move away from love.  Moving with love in our choices, we find that there is no karma.  Yet we still exist.  We are.


Matthew

Thistle.,


Quote:

can totally relate to what SHSS is saying.  I mean, how do we know if all of this isn't just our imagination?  Are we gods to our own existence?  As I sit here in this room is there anything outside of what I think I can visually see?  I've had dreams that have used ever one of my five senses.  I created my dream, am I creating the rest of it?  Is this just a dream?  Like SHSS asks, is the next level another dream?

Yes but this level is our "wake reality" and  to higher or lower monads  of other dimensions we are just a "vague,dream" from their awake realities, as they are  to us. We meet them in our dream state as they meet us in their dream states.

Gosh! I hope this makes some sense?

Alan

Alan I'm trying to understand.  When we are in what we think is a sleep and dream state, at that time is it a reality?  Sometimes you know you are dreaming but other times it feels so real.  Most of the time I don't remember my dreams but then when I'm in what I believe to be a dream state I don't remember what at this moment seems to be an awake state.   :-/  And the people we meet in what we think is a dream, in the morning if we could all recall our dreams would they have the same recollection?    

thistle

Alysia, Doc: I think we're basically in the same space. The wonder is how somehow individuality up to universality is a continuum with all points available to us as vantage points or views, separated only by a need to phase between the 'dreamlike' states Alan refers to. There's even signs that with practice even phasing eventually becomes unnecessary, that we can somehow almost simultaneously rest a little of our awareness in each. That there is no separation between them in say the way that there apparently is between locations and individuals in the physical.

It's  you suggest the going inwards and opening (you could say progressively dropping our limiting beliefs) that successively opens up these views to us. Like peeling an onion, but with the extra that each opening enables access to more of our limiting beliefs which when resolved enable further access in the way you describe.

I've indeed experienced a few quite profound incidences of resolving issues in this way Alysia, and a few more that seemed to slowly dissolve with coming to feel a lot better about my intrinsic worth (or love-abilty I guess).  :) ;)There's probably quite a lot more to go however!

This I guess is what I was getting at - that while it's all eventually accessible and capable of being dropped, that until we develop this ability  we are stuck with our beliefs. Perhaps also that we may ultimately end up dropping rather more than we expect too.

I'd add two bits of experience to the mix. I've experienced a very beautiful timeless place Doc where even thought starts to fall away, that clearly delivers the impression that awareness and knowing are separate from the thinking mind. There's this non verbal knowing. My thoughts ran a commentary on this (asking and answering questions) which became more and more distant, less and less in my control and less and less significant until it felt like it was somebody else speaking out of earshot.

The pity is that I can't get there routinely - it happened at the end of a week's retreat.

Another experience which nicely illustrates the problems of moving between states had my grandfather (I somehow knew it was him) trying to make contact with me - to enter a lucid dream, presumably as a physical appearing entity. My perception  (which was probably just my conscious mind making something conceptually understandable out of what was going on) was like there was this flexible membrane separating us. I could sense his wish to get through, and I could 'see' (in a kind of a way) his pushing quite agitatedly against the back of the membrane. I couldn't help him through though, and he hadn't made it by the time I lost the view.

I guess Alysia the question of just how much is determined by our beliefs is as before dependent on answering your 'who am I' question. One possibility is that we create everything that's not the 'piece' of source/the absolute/primordial mind that choses to manifest - everything that's not permanent...

Thistle,

I seem to have lost the thread as far as the other guys go!! But as to your question below I will give it another bash.


Quote:

Alan I'm trying to understand.  When we are in what we think is a sleep and dream state, at that time is it a reality?  Sometimes you know you are dreaming but other times it feels so real.  Most of the time I don't remember my dreams but then when I'm in what I believe to be a dream state I don't remember what at this moment seems to be an awake state.     And the people we meet in what we think is a dream, in the morning if we could all recall our dreams would they have the same recollection?     thistle

When you are asleep the reality is your conscious active controlling mind becomes dormant and you soul mystical spiritual subconscious mind goes on a "walkabout" "through other realities" which you might remember on waking or forget. Lucid dreams very lucid dream are you own reality and explorations into other dimensions and these are the dreams you should try to record.

Lucid dreams in Technicolor etc are a type of OBE’s. I use this method instead of the conscious difficult OBE that few can perfect. I used this method years ago but found it energy draining unlike the easy lucid dreaming method.

Sometimes the people you meet in your dream experience see you in their dream, but often you do not remember because to them the dream is unimportant. This of course relates to our earthly now reality.

There are other dreams that are strange and otherworldly, you breach time space and dimensions you see the conscious reality of other being or what I call monads, of higher developed realms of existence as well as lower realms of existence. Thus the sometimes hell like dream or nightmare or the heavily dream of love and peace. I all depends where you soul goes while you sleep. You can try to direct you nightly travels to where, and when you want to go no matter how far fetched

To monads in higher or lower realities, your reality appears as a dream to them, just as their dimensions appear as a dream to you. God dreams and at night we all join in with him

I hope this helps somewhat if not well we can just continue to dialogue until it does. Of course, I make no claim of infallibility; I am just another mortal trying my best to fathom my own reality.

alan

Like Vajra mentioned, in my experiences pure awareness is at a deeper level than thought. My perception of it is that thought is an action we are able to take out of an uprising of desire that moves out from awareness. Thought is essentially form though not as dense as the physical world objects around us.

Just as we interact with the physical world around us we also interact with the thought forms we create. Love and the ways we define this seems to be one of these states of consciousness where we can and do interact on higher levels of our being.

This is hard to describe, but my experience of pure awareness is silence and light. I am the awareness and I am me all at the same time. Thought and emotion arises from the "me" part of the awareness.

When I am not in the light, but can see it, such as a being of light, I feel the purest most intense love you can possibly imagine radiating from it. In this instance the love I feel is not coming from me, it is the being of light that is radiating it out.

Love, Kathy

Kathy,


Quote:

This is hard to describe, but my experience of pure awareness is silence and light. I am the awareness and I am me all at the same time. Thought and emotion arises from the "me" part of the awareness

When you reach the stage and state of absolute stillness and awareness, all Existence revolves around you and you merge with and become God

alan

Hi Ian, just taking your final statement that "who is the who that creates the temporary and insubstantial objectively oriented world we view"  hope I reworded your thought correctly, you could say we all as one created the temporary but not the eternal.

there are many meditation jump off spots..you could start one, on the idea that we are all One entity and all agreed physicality is Reality to the exclusion of a nonphysical world peopled with people who are not made of clay, but another substance less dense. but wait, haha! thats not what I wanted to say.

lol. I meant to say, yes, we are One, while our individual egos have the motive of dividing that oneness into segments, judgments, seeking the illusive grandiosity of it's individuality, perhaps without love, perhaps with love of a distorted nature.
Within this collective area, we agree on certain things..once we all agreed the world was flat. so that was reality..a limited reality. then someone said it was round. soon we all agreed, yes, we were wrong, it is indeed round. so we all share the truth, or we all share the limited view as our reality.

what happened was, if u can pick up on the most abstract talk probably on this board, is "We saw that we could give ourselves "time."  Linear time is a hard master unlike units of consciousness existing within a state of timelessness and eternal occupation.

within time is the growth of patience. Patience is a virtue it is said. Only on the earth could impatience be felt. Only on the Earth could a soul begin to own it's own self and develop presence, to become at one with the Now Moment, is what gaining presence means, as well to be in the present moment with what is happening now and our only choice, within free will is how we shall react to what is happening now, whether to contrive fearful thoughts, or rest in the trust that we are found, not lost. (not alone)

I was trying to get that idea across in my other post, of the power is possessed within the now moment and reality creating, is of a personal nature, which nonetheless effects the collective nature of reality producing, which rest on Oneness thoughts.
it appears we are focus points of attention. units of God. whatever you focus on comes into manifestation materially, and this is happening faster.

so we are careful what we focus on, as it takes only half the time to manifest it while before it took much time to do so.

Time, linear time is the illusion that we are stuck in it. We are not stuck in it. We play in it, we create in it, we can do what we want here, make love or make war and we do it all and we think it's real.
to get to the point where we see how much we lean on each other to make sense of it all, is the beginning of awakening. a cooperative effort is gathering on the Earth.
this is like PUL then. its a state of being, where we know then we do it together and it's much smoother then.

continuing with abstracts...it's like we are light bulbs, blinking in and out of true reality, when we blink off, we are unconscious; blink on and we're tuned into source. Linear time walk, physicality is this, the development to stay present and turned on increases with focus on only what is happening now and what our choices are in the single moment.
The sense of separation from others is what the ego builds on. If I get tuned in, I blink on, I feel at one with you. But if I listen to my ego it will say Ian needs fixing. I choose to stay tuned into the truth that as you said. We are in the same space, and there's plenty of space for all our friends here.
In the end, it looks tedious; only from the point of view of the ego, in that we are involved not so much in acts of good will, as we are involved in the undoing of our own internal conflicts, our errors of misperceiving others as not being our own selves.

Alysia,

Your quote.


Quote:

Time, linear time is the illusion that we are stuck in it. We are not stuck in it. We play in it, we create in it, we can do what we want here, make love or make war and we do it all and we think it's real. continuing with abstracts...it's like we are light bulbs, blinking in and out of true reality, when we blink off, we are unconscious; blink on and we're tuned into source. Linear time walk, physicality is this, the development to stay present and turned on increases with focus on only what is happening now and what our choices are in the single moment

Time linear time is an illusion as is the impossible concept of equating linear time and eternity. There is only the ever- changing "MOMENT". but linear time can be beautiful, like spending time in real fun or with ones first love. It is like your light bulb then on and immediately off.

How we long to hold on this bliss in this mortal frame!!

Linear time can also be awful even horrifying. Waiting for an execution, or at the doctors waiting room.

Yesterday is gone and but a memory , tomorrow a hope and dream "ONLY NOW IS REAL"

alan

thistle wrote on May 21^st, 2008 at 3:16am:

the people we meet in what we think is a dream, in the morning if we could all recall our dreams would they have the same recollection?     thistle

Hi Michele. I'm really glad u joined us as I've been logging dreams and obes for nearly all my life and enjoy talking about it. I think maybe I subconsciously asked for your presence here!  :)

I have experimented with various partners, either with mental telepathy, phasing, partnered exploration, dreams and full blown obes here and there.
My first full blown Obe at about 3 or 4 years of age.

Your question can be answered more fully in Bruce Moen's 5th book "Afterlife Knowledge Guidebook, A Manual for the Art of Retrieval & Afterlife Exploration.

Bruce visualized the creation of this board for people like you and me. Now and then I like to give him credit for bringing you to me because it's your questions help me grow too understand myself as well!
(I wrote a song once "A Love song is not a love song until I sing it to you.")

Moving right along, lol. There is a fine chapter in Bruce's books about Partnered Exploration, where people DO begin to realize we do meet up in dreams as well as learn to meet up while still in a waking consciousness. (telepathy, shared dreams)

When you do this upon finding a partner who's willing, it involves setting the intention in place to do it, and going for it bypassing the natural doubts in place surrounding the experiment as to personal ability. This involves going with the flow, trusting.

So I would advise not blowing off any dreams, but writing them down and exploring them, especially if someone you know is in that dream with you. What they other person will remember however, may be quite instructional to you, it is based on their own interpretive symbols that they will offer to you, most often some unconscious belief systems will arise in such an undertaking, revealing to you who they think you are, versus who you think you are.

All in all, it's great fun to Partner Explore, many surprising developments for reflection are there. My first partner, Linn, in Australia was of great value to my awakening process, that I carried an alter ego along with me on our first trip. an alter ego who felt unworthy of her love and attention.

I soon was able to merge my alter ego, not soon, but I now had the awareness of it in a conscious manner what I had to work with, a part of me I carried from my childhood. you could call it a belief system then that had to be integrated before further adventures could manifest, so not to confuse my friend!

This first PE took place with intention and then going to sleep, so was dream state. She emailed me she had met two of me. Both the dancer and the alter ego. The dancer was who I thought I was and she was the one I had intentionally projected over to Linn and so we had the knowledge that it was a shared vista, we had "met" in the same space of Mind.

I have too many examples of meeting with others out there, until one begins to question which reality is real, which is fabrication or wishful thinking? When the dreamworld or obe world becomes real, it sometimes produces a belief system crash, where you begin to feel quite crazy.

If this happens, ground yourself into life to get your bearings by attending lovingly to yourself and your family and friends; the crash will pass if you don't pick on yourself and just look at the fear, and know it's not real. Love is our essence. Truly though, an exploration partner can take you giant leaps into who and what we really are, and what we're doing here!

Alysia said:  I have too many examples of meeting with others out there, until one begins to question which reality is real, which is fabrication or wishful thinking? When the dreamworld or obe world becomes real, it sometimes produces a belief system crash, where you begin to feel quite crazy.

This has been so true for me, and when you become many different beings or nothing but a mathematical point of awareness or perhaps find yourself in your I/there, disc, or white birthday cake, the things that seemed so all important in this reality can become just a passing thought.

Infinity is what I think I am suggesting here.  I have not experienced infinity consciously and don't know how I could, nor do I want to now, but it does seem to me that we may, in fact, go on forever.

The reality of never ending could be overwhelming and so, I think, this is why we build boxes and take it a chunk at a time.

Like Alan said, (which gave me a chuckle)  Gosh!  I hope this makes some sense?

PUL  SHSS   :) :-* :)

Taking things "a chunk at a time" like SHSS suggests makes a lot of sense in order for us to get the most out of each experience as it comes.  

thistle

SHSS wrote on May 19^th, 2008 at 6:02pm:

Hi LaffingRain, Sorry I missed the chat, what a day I had.  Anyway I wanted to clear a few things up that I said because I am very bad at getting my points over. Goodness knows I try.  When I say dreams or imagination, I am talking of real reality.  I am not saying oh this is just fantasy or something unreal.  This reality is very real for the time being, but I think we will have other types of realities also that are very real.  I take my dreams and imagination very seriously in a humorous way. I believe in simultaneous time and oh boy!  Some of the beings I've seen.  I don't think we will be humans forever. I am also not an atheist, but I get upset that God or All That Is has been made out to be a monster. So I will say this another way.  When we get through with this experience, however long that takes our individual consciousness lives on although connected to other consciousnesses and will have other experiences. Anyway, just sharing my view which is always subject to change.  PUL   :)

maybe Next Sunday you can come. I've been here 8 yrs and still haven't gotten my point across very well SHSS! lol....birds of a feather.... :)

I'm with you, with I'm talking imagination, I too am talking real. we have more in common than meets the eye here, as you say "I take my dreams etc very seriously in a humorous way.....ok, haha! check out my user name!
as far as god being a monster..thats the human propensity to shuffle the blame unto the creator for our sufferings...but I wonder where the atheist shuffles the blame over to? probably unto society..what a vicious circle.
In the times ahead for us, if I can play fortune teller here, a new consciousness arises; something like instant self responsibility perhaps.

then we all can say the devil didn't make me do it, but then neither did god make me do it so I must be the one responsible! anyhoo..I'm looking forward to a new world, actually I think I'm already there and just keep typing on this board like I'm really here..hahaha!!

just read your newest post, quote: The reality of never ending could be overwhelming and so, I think, this is why we build boxes and take it a chunk at a time.
the next poster agrees, and I agree chunk at a time is to KISS. keep it simple silly. Otherwise we should on ourselves too easily and blow out brain circuits thinking too hard.

I think our of friend Monroe, Robert Monroe who started the Monroe Institute. When he first began having Obes, he suffered a belief system crash of major proportion.
He began making the rounds of various doctors, starting with a general practicioner on up to psychiatrist, I imagine he took some tranquilizers in there somewhere, as of course, none of the doctors really knew how to help him and the obes continued.
anyhow, he felt crazy. Because no one around him were having similar experiences..which is what they are, experiences.
As it turned out he was fulfilling his destiny to build the Monroe Institute and also supply us with his books, which in turn others like Bruce Moen came along as his student, suppling us with further books, tapes and teachings. Then Vickie is ready to publish her book now. I published mine, mentioning retrievals. Gordon Phinn, another member here has since published two books about our afterlife and his travels. who else? Bob, another member has promised a book. I must go light his fire and get him moving!  I wish.  

What is it that survives is the name of this topic thread. to get back on topic Ian, maybe it is what we leave behind in physical reality is what survives...it has to be a part of that at the least. I always say, it's the kids who are the future..lets leave them something to read.

Yet leaving something behind can be as simple as a child that knows how to love people because you raised it to do that. its an idea.

There's other books and people like Monroe, but it was Monroe's books that made me question if I was able to do what he did, a retrieval, that caused me to find out that I can do them, and that if he's not crazy to discover this other world, then I'm not crazy either for flippin out o me body!

well now we have phasing. we're gonna have to teach you phasing SHSS! its soooooo much easier than obe, obe is difficult to master. Phasing, you are just there.

love, alysia

Hi aylsia I beleive that the spirit and the conciousness survive death because thats how mediums tune in to the spirit by mindthoughts.

Love and God bless      love juditha

Hi Alysia, pardon my slow reply - I've as you know been diving in and out and other stuff caught my eye.

To your points on the 'who am I' question, and your comment that it becomes hard to tell which experience is real, and which the dream. And your mention of blinking in and out.

I can identify so much with this - there's times the physical starts to feel dreamlike, and to lose some of its compulsive quality. I was making headway via my meditation which with energy work was producing states that seemed to carry out into normal life. Then this family problem blew up last week and suddenly I'm leaden and locked in again.  ::)

Patience is a great word for what's required. Equanimity is another, as is presence. Courage to stay, to trust too. To quote Eckhardt Tolle  - there is nothing except now, nothing else is real. But it takes so much of whatever the ingredient is to rest in it, to not start into the mental gymnastics of ruminating about the past, or the future, or some other imagined reality.

Time plays its part too. I've heard it described as a way of slowing things down to a pace we can handle while learning, although of course that's only one view of the whole deal. Thistle's 'one chunk at a time'.

Mental gymnastics as above have the opposite effect. Eqanimity creates space which enables sensing and awareness, and hence opening into realities beyond the one that usually holds us entranced. Ultimately into creation of realities.

This all tends to come together for me with the idea (as I think you said) of an awareness hopping between multiple realities. All are presumably equally valid. The hopper is perhaps the 'I'. Lightness and lack of heavy identification with any belief system is perhaps the ticket to ride - get caught in one and you're grounded.

The C1 earth physical being so intense and addictive is the obvious candidate for the sort of clinging to it Monroe describes, but it seems to be possible to get attached to and locked into others too.

It certainly seems that more and more is manifesting. I wonder why this is. Is it a personal experience caused simply by opening, or something more generalised?

I recently started Yoga, and met a teacher last Friday as arranged weeks before. After formalities the flow of our conversation immediately led her to (unprompted) start talking in a really helpful way about dealing with difficult family relationships. I couldn't help laughing, as by then I was only just starting to get myself together again after the problem mentioned above which blew up out of nowhere -  after the meeting was arranged...

..

Alysia,

Phasing is what I have always done.  Then I started having Lucid Dreams where I would see a window or door open and then fly through.  I have not experienced separating from my body like Monroe talks about in his first book.  People talk about this velcro type of separating and the loud roars etc.  I have not had that.  I started by accident and then in meditation, then got some cd's to have more control over it.  It's an instantaneous thing with me.  So I ordered Moens last book and cd's, but he's gone so I am waiting patiently, but I am looking forward to learning retrievals because I have not done that, unless unconsciously, but I want to so much.  I have been to the library and to classes on what is called 27.  I have conversation with my I/there (symbols, colors, pictures, feelings, etc.) and have been inside consciously, but this seems to just happen.  I want to be able to do this when I want.

So to be a little clearer.  I don't actually go anywhere, I am already there in the blink of an eye, although sometimes I can feel like I'm flying in a  Lucid Dream.  I hope I do not sound like I am bragging for far from it.  I wish I could do the things you do, I am just explaining because I am new and have not mentioned it.

PUL
SHSS

SHSS:

Regarding OBEs with all the effects, I used to have them, but once I energetically developed it was no longer necessary. Therefore, I don't believe you have to worry about all the effects. That open door or window thing sounds cool. The sort of thing your spirit guidance (perhaps your disk) might be setting up for you.

Here is how retrievels started for me. First while laying in bed awake or meditating I would see an image of a person looking at me and it would seem is if this person was stressed out in some way. The image would dissapear and I'd imagine myself talking to this person in retrievel terms. It wouldn't take long before I found myself in some place non-physically and events would take place without my imagining them. After receiving a few verifications I didn't feel the need to keep questioning whether something is actually taking place.


SHSS wrote on May 21^st, 2008 at 5:41pm:

Alysia, Phasing is what I have always done.  Then I started having Lucid Dreams where I would see a window or door open and then fly through.  I have not experienced separating from my body like Monroe talks about in his first book.  People talk about this velcro type of separating and the loud roars etc.  I have not had that.  I started by accident and then in meditation, then got some cd's to have more control over it.  It's an instantaneous thing with me.  So I ordered Moens last book and cd's, but he's gone so I am waiting patiently, but I am looking forward to learning retrievals because I have not done that, unless unconsciously, but I want to so much.  I have been to the library and to classes on what is called 27.  I have conversation with my I/there (symbols, colors, pictures, feelings, etc.) and have been inside consciously, but this seems to just happen.  I want to be able to do this when I want. So to be a little clearer.  I don't actually go anywhere, I am already there in the blink of an eye, although sometimes I can feel like I'm flying in a  Lucid Dream.  I hope I do not sound like I am bragging for far from it.  I wish I could do the things you do, I am just explaining because I am new and have not mentioned it. PUL SHSS

SHSS wrote on May 21^st, 2008 at 5:41pm:

Alysia, Phasing is what I have always done.  Then I started having Lucid Dreams where I would see a window or door open and then fly through.  I have not experienced separating from my body like Monroe talks about in his first book.  People talk about this velcro type of separating and the loud roars etc.  I have not had that.  I started by accident and then in meditation, then got some cd's to have more control over it.  It's an instantaneous thing with me.  So I ordered Moens last book and cd's, but he's gone so I am waiting patiently, but I am looking forward to learning retrievals because I have not done that, unless unconsciously, but I want to so much.  I have been to the library and to classes on what is called 27.  I have conversation with my I/there (symbols, colors, pictures, feelings, etc.) and have been inside consciously, but this seems to just happen.  I want to be able to do this when I want. So to be a little clearer.  I don't actually go anywhere, I am already there in the blink of an eye, although sometimes I can feel like I'm flying in a  Lucid Dream.  I hope I do not sound like I am bragging for far from it.  I wish I could do the things you do, I am just explaining because I am new and have not mentioned it. PUL SHSS

We seem to be standing in the exact same place SHSS. If you already phase then I don't have to explain what it is, but I consider since Monroe started obe-ing, and the phasing developed from that, I often see phasing as superior method of exploring, however, I frequently encounter mind boggling obe's, of a life changing circumstance and so I can no longer believe one method superior over another. no, you're not bragging...I was picking up that you're glad to be able to talk about it and you have no idea how happy you make me! lol! I love it when folks feel free enough to share their stuff.

I learn from others like you. I also learn by writing it down. more info filters down. I've actually only obed maybe 30 to 40 times in my 61 years, and some of those can fall under lucid dreams. phasing a couple times a year, although it's happening more often I'm in focus 15, no time zone, nonduality.
the past is constantly available here, and future glimpses are coming more often, but at the same time the future can be changed when it's glimpsed this way.

Be glad to discuss retrievals with you anytime. Have you established your own place out there yet? where you can begin to imagine doing a retrieval? what I did once is set up in the imagination a little turning light on my house ATTENTION GUIDES! WE GOT A LIVE ONE HERE! hahaha!

finally attracted someone's guidance and they took me on a run or two. thanks or joining us again, hope to have a long friendship. love, alysia

Ian said: It certainly seems that more and more is manifesting. I wonder why this is.
___

Some say theres a speed up of the cycle of rotation of our planet which means we have less hours in a day, they say we only have 16 hours in a day now. but I call it the shift in consciousness because we are all shifting our beliefs around as we grow. just a simple explanation for what is difficult to put in words.
_____

Is it a personal experience caused simply by opening, or something more generalised?
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we can close down to it, but like you said caused by opening to it, once you get on the path, so to speak, it's because you wanted to know yourself, you don't want to shut down to knowledge of yourself, you wouldn't want to do that anyway, so I always say enjoy the ride.
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I recently started Yoga, and met a teacher last Friday as arranged weeks before. After formalities the flow of our conversation immediately led her to (unprompted) start talking in a really helpful way about dealing with difficult family relationships. I couldn't help laughing, as by then I was only just starting to get myself together again after the problem mentioned above which blew up out of nowhere -  after the meeting was arranged...
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it's not a coincidence, the things that happen this way, they always cause the giggles in me too. I ascertained later, I remember putting out a call for a certain answer to come, and it shows up in a body form sometimes, a real person is delivering the answer to a prayer. this person to my way of perspective, doesn't know spirit is using them to tell me what I need to know. sometimes if their into my studies we can both know what's going on, but generally most folks don't study these areas, so good for you, I hope the Yoga teacher was able to assist. it shows the oneness aspect of us all.

a friend of mine told me something I needed to hear once or twice, he said as we grow spiritually, our circle of friends changes, the family members and those relations may even change. So we should be on our toes if that happens, I suppose, it's hard to leave old friends..not to speak of leaving our family members...I one time had to die to a daughter role to my mother, I think I told you about that already. Turns out we role play as spirit in a body.
thanks for telling us that cheery story Ian!

Recoverer's retrieval: First while laying in bed awake or meditating I would see an image of a person looking at me and it would seem is if this person was stressed out in some way. The image would dissapear and I'd imagine myself talking to this person in retrievel terms. It wouldn't take long before I found myself in some place non-physically and events would take place without my imagining them. After receiving a few verifications I didn't feel the need to keep questioning whether something is actually taking place.
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I had a similar retrieval take place like the above. The first time I could call it phasing with retrieval. I had to come here for clarification what just happened.

I set my intention during 9/11 to do a retrieval. I asked for guides but did not sense any, I assumed they were there but invisible. I had no sense of travel like I usually do. Just instantly, while wide awake with my eyes closed waiting for a guide to arrive, suddenly a man's full face popped into my 3rd eye, every feature was clear, and so I wasn't using my imagination at all to see this face.
Then as R says, the facial expression was read. My guy was looking resigned, hang dog, sad.

I didn't immediately begin conversation but stayed with him, studying him, picking up his thoughts about the collapse of the building, his longing for it to be not collapsed..very strong loyalty he had for his job description. a fine man. I fell immediately in love with him. lol. I was trying hard to figure out how to retrieve this one and became some kind of tinkerbell flitting back and forth until he noticed me and grinned, then when I had his attention away from his grief circumstances, was when some helpers approached to lead him from the wreckage.
I did get the chance to ask him if he knew he was not in his body, had died, and he said he sort of knew that, but it hadn't completely sunken in, so it's like a shock state they get in.

I wrote this out because of the similar way that R and I did that retrieval, with the face just appearing.

Thank you recoverer and Alysia.  I want to do retrievals so bad it's killing me.  I have not set up a home inside, I don't know how.  Yesterday I talked, (telepathy) with an old dead friend I had forgotten all about and this was somewhat shocking and from what has been going on lately, I feel doing retrievals is getting close.
I did not quit here.  I had an awful Sunday and needed some time to recover.  Not many people are accepting of this stuff and I was blessed with a very religious family that does a lot of praying for my lost soul.  I don't mention what I'm into, but if you come over to my house, you can't help but see thousands of very weird books.  Oh well.
If it were not for the internet, I would not have anyone to talk to about this stuff.  I don't know where Monroe found all his friends.  PUL

SHSS:

Have you read the below thread?  Since I've posted it I've spoken again to one of the ladies.  I can talk to her freely about spiritual matters. Sometimes things can be arranged.

Regarding helping with retrievels, some sources say that we help when we don't know about it while asleep. You might watch your dreams and see if any clues are provided which suggest that this is the case. Perhaps some energetic adjustments are needed before you can help with retrievels consciously. Have you felt anything going on with your energy?

http://www.afterlife-knowledge.com/cgi-bin/yabb/YaBB.cgi?num=1209401815

Thanks recoverer.

That's an interesting post.  Yes, I think things can be arranged this way.  I forget.
I have started to write down my dreams again.  I had quit because I had so much at one time, my fingers got tired.  I will pay attention to this because I have a feeling this may be going on-unconscious retrievals.   :)

SHSS wrote on May 21^st, 2008 at 6:52pm:

Thank you recoverer and Alysia.  I want to do retrievals so bad it's killing me.  I have not set up a home inside, I don't know how.  Yesterday I talked, (telepathy) with an old dead friend I had forgotten all about and this was somewhat shocking and from what has been going on lately, I feel doing retrievals is getting close. I did not quit here.  I had an awful Sunday and needed some time to recover.  Not many people are accepting of this stuff and I was blessed with a very religious family that does a lot of praying for my lost soul.  I don't mention what I'm into, but if you come over to my house, you can't help but see thousands of very weird books.  Oh well. If it were not for the internet, I would not have anyone to talk to about this stuff.  I don't know where Monroe found all his friends.  PUL

if you spoke with an old dead friend (smiling at your words) and what's more you're entirely aware of doing this, you are closer to doing retrievals than you may know, as from my information, many folks cannot receive their messages or pick up their efforts to communicate.

so you're like a bridge between the two dimensions already. btw, your talk with your friend reminds me how my sister passed over to the other side, about 15 years go by, I start developing myself with the things discussed on this board, she popped up while I was typing out a message to my PE partner on the puter and lol! she starts lighting into me about something I said to her 25 years ago...and the conversation seemed so normal while it was going on..suddenly I saw her face with the 3rd eye and knew it was real. anyway we resolved our differences right there and then. kinda cool.
boy, was she a fireball...anyway, it's true, I've seen folks come here and say they have done a retrieval but they didn't fully realize it was a retrieval..it can be done and not remembered.

with my first retrieval, it was instigated by the desire to find out if I could. same as you maybe. I think you could, but then I think most of us can, with a little study. that time a guide came and got me and took me from, or assisted me out of the body for that first one.

you could ask for a guide, a very good one and then see what happens. Sometimes when I'm asked to do one, I'll think about it for a few days before I get the go ahead to do it, and this just feels right if I'm uncertain, then I get the go ahead, so I assume it's spirit, or guides that give me a thumbs up.
I only do certain kinds, my vibration has to fit the retrievee's I suppose.