Hey Guys,
The game is afoot again. So finally after installing anti-everything for, it seems the second time this year, and throwing more money at my pc, I’m back. I picked this thread because of the focusing issue and of course Alysia’s high credibility with me, and went to get my Guidebook out and had a quick thought, “Wouldn’t it be funny if it opened to page 104?.” Of course it did because of the “fun” things our guides do for us just for a laugh and because back in April, before the coma, I was going to respond to dream thread and had inserted samples of the hardcopy between pages 104 and 105. Little did I realize then that I would be facing the actual experience of having to apply, in waking life, the focused attention exercise. To backtrack, when in the coma in May, I had the good sense to request a message (Thanks to Bruce and Monroe’s training) as soon as I realized that I had to leave the “dream” of working with my soul group. The message was, “What you FOCUS on is your REALITY”. This was pretty heavy for me to ponder and while out on a 3-month short-term disability leave, I had the time to do so at my leisure. Now I’m back working a 5 day week and attempting to keep my reality mellow, but it ain’t happen’.
You see, what I’m trying to accomplish is the ability to keep a perspective which enables me, my personality, to not get so caught up in the drama or my emotions that I forget that the only thing that really counts is the law of love which surrounds me and I’m actually witnessing being exchanged between my co-workers, clients, family, and friends in huge amounts in real time. So many little things are happening in C1 which prove this to me as long as I can ride out the hassling from the system (management) and my own boredom/impatience, which by the way has increased now that I no longer smoke. My focused reality seems mainly to consist of the emotion of fear at being yelled at, fired, or misunderstood for not following orders and/or blowing my cool, compromising my values of the right thing to do, or generally losing my focus that those in power are not necessarily doing the right thing by the client due to there own unresolved power issues and my lack of confidence in sticking to realizing that I am only here to work through my own challenges including old/current misuse of power issues etc.
Now the thing that is keeping me more or less in a state of altered consciousness during this time and aiding in a broader perspective has been a funny old book that I came across the second week in August. It was written before WWII by Janet Melanie Ailsa Mills called The Wheel of Rebirth, and more recently published by the Theosophical Society (Quest, 1976). And believe me, since going back to work full time on the 14th with the pressure to do the impossible increasing daily tasks, losing my precious cat, Spirit, and losing my access to this site, (my sanity and link to my sons and brothers) last weekend, I really needed something to keep me on track.
What impresses me about this book is how current it is as it repeats many things as if taken from ACIM and all types of our current thinking regarding reincarnation, ways of accessing altered consciousness etc. and relates it in a series of lives of one man or everyman from Atlantis up through early twentieth century England. The author, who wrote 40 years after experiencing the overview of lives with the help of a teacher/guide, brings out not only a purpose in gaining such a perspective but also many foods for thought on why we have such difficulty in achieving the ability to learn from our mistakes. We are also reminded, through the eight lives reported which are relevant to all our most challenging issues, that it is all about learning to gain balance with our emotions and that it is through internalizing the law of love, the most difficult thing for all of us to conquer, we are able to get off the cycle more quickly.
Getting back to Chapter 22 that includes page 104, reviews exploration techniques dreams, lucid dreaming, meditation and lucid dreaming, and OBE’s and using PE for verification. It also explores the pros and cons of each so that we can use them to our benefit with minimal distortions. Very helpful in learning to be aware of the shift between inner and outer consciousness and learning to trust in our experiences. I also think that the more obvious Cl thing like reading the posts on this site, which we all have access to and giving feedback are equally as important to link the techniques to our everyday happenings. Like when Alysia mentioned the visit with Tutti via a “dream” and tells of actually feeling the complete experience of being with her via the heart and love. Our love, Spirit went rather quickly and stopped eating for about 10 days but just before this fast, the strangest thing happened. He peacefully came up to within 6” of my face, his glowing amber eyes as big as saucers, and stared at me for at least a full minute. This was not normal behavior for this shy cat and I sense that something special was going on. I also feel prompted to mention that he seemed to have developed a massive cancerous growth in his intestines to the point where the vet reported that he had only a week and a 1/2 to live.within 24 hours of my 2 month bacterial infection going away.
Anyhow, he stopped eating and from then on his eyes stayed only half open. He slept a lot and would sit by me when I was reading but a few days before he left, he no longer jumped up on my chair or the bed, although we did lift him to be with us at times. It’s hard to explain how peaceful this whole experience was, none of the guilt like I had with Sandy. I kept repeating how grateful I was for having such a super cat for eighteen years who even visited me at the hospital during my coma, one time during a lucid dream, one time as a delusion, and two times where he even brought a lioness with him, as they stayed posted in front of me during one double dream episode. The comfort he gave me is beyond words. Before Spirit I had less of a love connection with animals but that has all since changed.
Meanwhile, my Mac was in charge of helping Spirit and “Death is just an open door…” include on the “Just Questions?” was extremely appropriate for our situation as well as anyone else who has “lost” a love through “death”. I’ve placed this poem in an album with our favorite picture of Spirit and since I don’t believe in accidents, I thank Cathy_B for being the vehicle for bringing this gift. Although I have not met him in a lucid dream, as I did my dog Sandy shortly after she left, I told my brother and a woman at work about Spirit the following Monday. They both stated that they had dreamt he would die on Saturday.
I still wonder what is to happen next since Spirit’s leaving indicated to me that change is in the wind again. Meanwhile, I’ll continue to listen and pay heed to whatever comes my way or what happens when I place my intent on benefiting from my dreams. Reminds me of a dream I had the other morning where I woke up at a beach having an intense recognition/eye hand motion contact with my best sister/friend from back east that concerned me enough to call her that night. Nothing seemed amiss but I still wonder if that could be another happening in her life of mine.
Hindsight’s great when we learn something new about ourselves and our experiences but nothing bets the ability to be aware, request information or clarification, and maintain an overall perspective while in the midst of an experience whether it’s in C1 or any of the other focus levels. All things mentioned in the Bruce’s guidebook help us to do this and I’ve had enough incidents whether dreaming, meditating, or even in a coma where these suggestions, tips, and tools have been darn handy and, as I use them, I increasingly trust them.
I do ramble on
, thanks for the thread dear friend. Love, Jean