Wishing everyone God's Peace and Blessings - I'm off this board for a while.

Leaving you all with an inspirational quotation from Emanuel Swedenborg:

Lastly, I will state what those people become like after death who ascribe all things to their own intelligence, and little or nothing to the Word. They first become as if inebriated, then as if silly, and finally stupid, and they sit in darkness. Of such insanity, therefore, let all beware.

Adios - God Be With You,
Judy

I'm not feeling the love here.  The PUL on this board turns on & off so fast it makes my head spin.

“Perceive it all as love and you won't see it turning on and off. Everyone needs to give their ego a rest.”

This brings up an interesting question… how do we give our ego a rest? 

What we see in others is the exact same thing that we see and understand within our self.  If we see love in others, then this is because we know and understand love.  If we see anger in others, then this is because we know and understand anger.  Even when we know that we have a choice, we still seem to choose to do what we do not really want to do.  It’s like a constant age-old battle within our self.  Jesus for example described this as the spirit being willing, but the flesh is weak.  And Paul in Romans 7:22 describes this as a war between his inmost self and his mind making him “captive to the law of sin” and I could go on giving examples of the battle we each experience from other sources… but my point is that there’s not a human alive who hasn’t experienced this duality and the battle between our core essence and our ego.

Recognizing this battle and understanding it is how we can give our ego a rest.  Essentially it is the flow of energy that wells up from within us that we allow or disallow to flow easily.  The energy of our core manifests as feelings of free flowing love and pleasure and we all wish to experience more of this in our lives.  So why don’t we then? 

I think it is because we don’t have a complete understanding of this energy because negative energy produces pleasure as well and this is what confuses us.  When we lash out or make little snide remarks we feel momentary pleasure because it is the movement of energy that feels pleasurable regardless of what we are manifesting… love or anger, etc.  I think we really need to understand and “get this”… It is the movement of energy that produces pleasure!  What manifests from the energy is determinable by our belief system, which is riddled with fears of all kinds.

PUL not only comes from our core essence, it is our core essence.  As this energy wells up from within it begins to flow pure, but as it moves we much of the time either block it or distort it because of our fears that we have incorporated into our belief system.  For example, we are usually quite shy about showing our true essence and most of the time we don’t show how much we care or how much we love.  We cover our love up by labeling it, we squelch it to what we think is a reasonable degree of expression of appropriate behavior.  In other words, we don’t allow the fullness of our core to express itself as PUL most of the time. 

Sometimes in a moment when we are caught off guard and allow our core essence to flow freely we let go and out comes our core essence in a sudden act of kindness or expression of love or friendship and a moment of close connection is made and PUL is released.  Then, not being able to tolerate the purity of this love and light we become shy and pull away.  It takes only a few seconds for us to feel embarrassed and close off a bit, thereby shutting down the flow of our love.  This happens because we started thinking things like… maybe I did something wrong, etc. and eventually we stop the flow of PUL.  So when we stop the flow of our life force, we contain it and distort it.  We bring ourselves back to what feels “safe” and “normal” because we don’t want to rock any boats… especially our own.  This is the human condition that we all are experiencing and we live in this duality of choice.

Choice is our free will in action.  In every moment we choose to say yes to allow our core essence of love to flow freely by saying yes to a balanced, powerful and safe undefendedness or we choose to say no.  When we say no, we are in a defense mode that blocks our true essence.  And this is what I think healing is all about.  Healing is reconnecting to our core essence in the areas of our life where we have in our psyche disconnected from our core.  When we suppress the love and positive energy within, we also suppress our creativity, our health and our ability to heal ourselves physically, mentally and spiritually.  We always have the choice of aligning with our core or aligning with our ego.  The first heals us; the latter maintains the status quo.  I think we give our ego a rest when as Mairlyn says… we perceive it all with love… even our suffering.

Love and light to all of you beautiful people!
Kathy

I am prompted to include a quote here that I just happened upon in my readings:

"Humor is emotional chaos remembered in tranquility."
                      James Thurber

Thus, remembered in tranquility, all of our disagreements can be taken with a grain of salt.  Perhaps arsenic is transformed to salt by a magical alchemy called PUL?  I am thankful to know you all. 

love to each and everyone here, blink

Is this a board for people who base their lives on love, or for people who base it on fear? I joined this board because I believe that for the most part its members are interested in true experience based knowledge and love, rather than ego preserving belief systems. This predicament does provide some light though. Everytime I read a fear based post, the real truth becomes clear. Such posts have a completely opposite effect of their intent. This is because I respond with my heart, rather than with my ego based mind.



Beserk:

If you are in fact the reincarnation Eric Swedenborg, do you believe that your life plan was to make the same mistakes again? My guess is that there are some very loving beings in the spirit World that are rooting for you. Don't be afraid to give them a call. If you are sincere in your heart about finding a higher truth, there is no need for you to fear asking questions that some people might be afraid to ask?

Try looking at what you claim, without the intent of prooving it to be correct. For example, do you actually believe that Dr. Stevenson's reincarnation case study findings are stories of possession? Talk about doing all that one can do to reinforce the belief system one is preserving one's ego with.

The ego based mind "isn't" interested in truth, because as long as it can resort to a belief system,  whatever that belief system is, it feels like it has control. The truth itself, which can be known without thought, if very foreboding as far as the ego is concerned. Once real knowlege becomes available, the ego based mind no longer has a say.


No disrespect intended. I wish you the best.

One of these days, since we have all of eternity, we''ll each take a moment of no-time to have a real good laugh about this thread. We'll be: "Ha, ha-remember when we-ha, ha- used to debate about-ha, ha-what's so plain and clear to each and every one of us now-ha, ha."

Don-

I think retrievals are possible but with this caveat- they are not a parlor game, not like playing with a ouija board.

The thing that makes me think retrievals are indeed possible is the book Lighted Passage by Howell Vincent.  It was written 60 years ago, before Bruce was even born so at least in terms of the popularity of retrievals, I doubt hardly any folks even knew about the concept back then.  So we can't chalk it up to the power of suggestion.

But Vincent emphasized an essential prerequisite to retrievals......a prayerful attitude and a genuine desire to help.  He didn't pick out specific people to retrieve after he learned of their death from the obit page.  He just asked that God direct him to those in need.  And since he was doing this during WWII, he was directed to soldiers of all countries killed on the battlefield.

He called these rescues, not retrievals, but it's clear they are the same thing. 

The beautiful thing about this book is that it wasn't written in order to discuss retrievals.  In fact, that part of it was just a sidelight to his main purpose of writing about his daughter's untimely death, so we can be satisfied that he wasn't trying to promote or publicize retrievals.

All of that, including the fact that I personally know his grandson and know how much Vincent was loved and respected, makes me convinced that retrievals are indeed possible.  Probably rare, but definitely possible.

R
ps to Alysia- I think the best approach is to come to grips with the fact that none of us really knows much of anything.  In fact, isn't that one of the central precepts of ACIM?

Dear Alysia:
No apology necessary.  I continue to profoundly respect you.  I apologize that my ego flared up yet again.