I've watched some of Buhlman's videos and read his recent book.

A lot of what he says seems okay, but despite the fact of how fervently he speaks against having beliefs, I believe he has some of his own.

This whole thing of having no beliefs whatsoever can become a limiting way of thinking in itself. A person becomes so "afraid" of getting caught up in a belief system that he (or she) ends up not having enough openness of mind to consider when some human beliefs have an element of truth.

William might be afraid to see that there might be some truth to Christ, yet he refers to Buddhist viewpoints, such as the clear light, so probably more than he is willing to admit,  he has his preferences.

It is best to not replace one form of dogmatism with another form of dogmatism such as you can't believe in anything, especially if it relates to something such as Jesus.

Perhaps there is some truth to Jesus that doesn't have to do with fear-based fundamentalism. A truth that relates to the greatest love of all. Don't be afraid to find out because of what some other supposedly belief transcendent people say.

I haven't heard that old saying. It makes sense.

rondele wrote on Aug 12^th, 2015 at 2:57pm:

1. I am a Christian. I was brought up a Christian so I have been Christian all my life. My faith has grown as I have grown, and I have grown as my faith has grown. Nowadays my faith is stronger than it has ever been. I have come to understand my religion more deeply than I ever thought would be possible for me. I am comfortable in a church of any denomination - fundamental, protestant, catholic, orthodox, and others, and I consider myself at home in any and all of them, although my preference is for the more traditional services. I enjoy visiting empty churches. I have worked as a Christian chaplain and in doing so have provided pastoral support for people of all faiths.    

2. I can leave my body. I have been doing so for over thirty years. I can leave the body in sleep, in prayer and meditation, while relaxing, sitting, active, walking, and in differing ways and methods. I understand and can explain every detail of the techniques and mechanics involved. I can extend part of my consciousness from myself, and/or alter its range of perception. I have other related type skills too, which I have only briefly mentioned, and some I have never mentioned to anyone and probably never will.

I mention those two points because many people in present day spiritual groups and movements teach that those two points cannot go together in the one individual. They say or imply that Christians cannot do such things, that Christians are closed minded and materialistic. Those people are wrong. Christianity is the broadest and most diverse religion on Earth. It teaches the concepts of truth and love to all sorts of people in the way that best suits them. That is why there are so many styles of Christian worship, and is why the parables are multilayered allegories, and are true from their most literal to most abstract meanings, and as such they speak to the individual, whoever they are. Christianity is the only religion whose central teaching is of the workings, practice and power of love and forgiveness, and which contains page after page of teachings on love and forgiveness, not just love and forgiveness to one's own kin and kind but to everyone, including those who hate us and would do us harm.

There are many who claim there exists an alternative and higher form of love, caring, compassion, than that taught by Christianity. Many are the "I'm-spiritual-not-religious" set, the humanitarians, and others, but they would not even have the idea of their alternative if not for the Christian true and original, for before Christ the power of love and forgiveness was only vaguely mentioned here and there in the religions and philosophies of the world, and had not been taught and demonstrated anywhere previously. So although they hate the fact, those who claim to have an alternative are a product of Christianity itself and in a sense they are Christianised. They are part of Christendom for they are a product of it, but they are the anti-Christians, for theirs is a reaction against the true and original, and theirs is false, for there is only one true love, not two. Despite them getting their idea from him, and portraying themselves as the good elite, they can't, won't or have difficulty saying that Jesus Christ is their saviour, and that they are Christians and are members of the Christian church. This is because they are the alternatives, and this is why John said to test them this way.      

Occasionally on this forum and others, and much more so in my employments in various capacities where I work amongst many "humanitarians", assorted government funded do-gooders and those who are endlessly claiming to be "caring" and "compassionate", and amongst the spiritual new-age mystic set to whom I teach meditative skills, I frequently hear Christianity rubbished and undermined, referred to as if it is something ridiculous, low level, basic, and even evil; its church welfare services deliberately left out of communication loops, twelve step programs (the most successful self help programs in the world) continually rubbished and clients advised not to attend them, their clients and the public continually subject to a stream of gross to subtle insinuation, condemnation and ridicule of Christians, and often uttered in the same breath with such words as hypocrites, paedophiles, patriarchy, fundamentalists, conservatives, materialists, right-wingers, capitalists....   It is much the same amongst the good elite the western world over.

And all of that is fine, there is nothing wrong with the way things are, as unpleasant as they may be. It is meant to be that way, was inevitable and foreseen from the beginning. Despite appearances, the world is fair, perfect and properly overseen. Do not fall into the trap of thinking it is not, or of believing or thinking that you behold an alternative idea for how society or the world should be, for that is elitist thinking and soon leads to madness of heart followed by insanity of mind. Always value other people's freewill, regardless who they are and how they use it, for God gave them freewill as a means to learn and grow. Valuing other people's freewill keeps our love from becoming hate that believes itself to be love. As far as the individual is concerned, it is important to exercise observance and intelligence, learn to discriminate between one thing and another, to know conscience, to exercise love and forgiveness and discreet helpfulness towards others. To wish well for others, no matter who they are.

You did not define or describe what your "new normal" is. I'm guessing it is taking shape. I seldom suggest anyone should change religions. But if they do that is up to them. Personally I consider that is like changing horses in midstream, and no one who is serious about getting across river does that - they stick with their horse, give it its head and encourage it forward. A large part of an individual's deep moral wiring is in the code of the religion he was brought up with, as his verbal thinking is within the code of his first language. Almost no English speaker who learns German as a second language at a mature age will ever be able to hold an in depth conversation in it on complex technical, religious or philosophical matters. And German is related to English. Try Icelandic or Mandarin.  Building upon and further developing our language skills and religious understanding is a different thing and is good. We might even bring in concepts from other sources and build them upon our foundation. I have done that myself. I am familiar with the scriptures, traditions and practices of all major religions, and have a reasonable conceptual understanding of them, and I can see how they intersect, overlap and compliment. If Christianity the way it was practiced where you grew up or the particular Christians you knew then are not to your liking now, then keep what you learnt that has been beneficial, that rings true, good and right, and build upon it, evolve, and develop it further. Bring in other ideas, concepts, that help you climb. Climb the ladder to higher rungs, but be wary of trying to step across from completely off of your ladder onto another ladder, for that is how falls can occur. And when you have climbed higher do not do what many do, which is to look back at the rungs of the ladder below themselves of which they have themselves climbed up from and rubbish those who are behind them on those rungs - like we commonly see the "spiritual" ones on the higher rungs who talk about their unconditional love rubbishing the fundamental Christians on the lower rungs, but in fact those spiritual ones are not even where they think they are. They think they are looking down but they are looking up.             

As for prayer, don't aim low. The greatest concept of God you can conceive of, in your soul, mind and heart - pray to that, nothing less or part thereof. And be aware of the most central and core part of your self, that is the part of you that does the praying. So prayer is the joining or communing of those two, yourself and God. Do not imagine God, for to think of a god is to create one, and your bible warns you against worshiping images. Instead, be aware of God, from his awareness to your awareness, from his will to your conscience, from his love to your heart. 

To appeal to God "in Christ's name" is not empty words. For those who know his story and his message, to use his name aligns our soul, intent and heart, with the outward flow of light and love from God, which is the only offspring from God, and whose name is Christ. As there is the sun and there is the light and warmth that comes from the sun.

Conscience is in between God and our self. It is our highest sense within our self of what is good and right to do. We can conceive of nothing higher, or else that something higher becomes our conscience. By definition conscience is always the highest. And it is only what comes in via conscience our highest sense of what is good and right, and comes in via the inner upper pinnacle of our being vertically downward that we acknowledge. That is where God will impress upon us. What comes in laterally, upon the sides of mind, is of lesser standard and should be regarded as no significance. Even what comes in via conscience must be treated as information, not divine knowledge, for as your bible says, God has given all judgement to the son. God's love, called the Christ, moves through human hearts. It is not our love, is not generated by us, but exists before we use it, and before it comes through us. No moment of love going through our heart is the same love, like water going under a bridge, it is flowing all the time. All love felt by all people is the same spirit of love. It is alive and can be communicated with. Its name is Christ. It will come to you and obey you within its role and your benefit. Its name is also Jesus, because his life was a reflection of the greater spirit, and he answers to that too. Don't just sit on what you learn in prayer, live out what comes in, in other words, live out your highest standard through words, hands and heart towards those around you, for love and the holy spirit are like the wind, they only exist when moving, and are like water running through a faucet that must run through or no more will come through. If you live out your best then the channel through you from conscience to output will become grooved and free, and the flow into you, through you and out of you will become smooth and steady.

Spare time, once or twice a day to practice.  Experiment, trial, practice. Also when sitting, walking, travelling, when doing tasks. Ponder, muse, contemplate, when sitting, standing, walking. Sleep on things. Cultivate virtues as you best understand them to be; develop and evolve them.            

Regarding what 1796 said, I don’t believe it is completely accurate. When it comes to conservative versus liberal people, you’ll find good people in both groups and not so good people in both groups.

Regarding liberals that excluded Christian groups, I believe it works both ways. I know of two liberal-minded attorneys who got fired from where I work because they didn’t get along with the conservatives.  An unloving attitude from either group isn’t Christ-like.

I don’t believe it is correct for some people to speak of Christianity in the negative way they do, but to some degree it is understandable why they do.  Perhaps they don’t agree with the anti-gay business. Perhaps they don’t believe it is correct to conclude that many people are going to end up in hell for all of eternity simply because they don’t believe in the supposed right way.

Much of Christianity has a big fear element. You better believe as some Christians say, or you’ll end up in hell for all of eternity. Some Christians are afraid to question the Bible because they are afraid that they will be punished.

It could be that Doodad has a past that includes such factors, so I believe it is important to emphasize the fact that fear and spirituality don’t go together. If a person is influenced by fear he’ll have a hard time finding out what’s true.

I had two dreams that Jesus was in, and in both cases his presence was very positive and people appreciated it. Yet, he was very humble (not in a weak meek way) and down to earth. My guess is that he is able to see when both conservatives and liberals are genuinely motivated by love, and when they are not. He probably understands that each Soul progresses at its own pace and that there is no need to have anger towards those who are still learning. If he did in fact tell the prodigal son story, perhaps he meant it.  I spoke as if he might’ve told the story rather than state that he absolutely did, because I’m not afraid to question, it is okay to do so.

I do agree that a person won’t fully understand what love is about until he opens up to divine love.

Hi Doodad

I'd be more interested to know how well Buhlman's techniques work for you in OBE work?

As for your questions, the most important thing to do is to explore and make decisions for yourself. I think that is an approach supported independently both by Buhlman and by Bruce Moen.

I am currently trying some of Buhlman's suggestions. I am not so talented at this work, though I suppose success is determined what one think "out of body" means. I get inside my own head so much that sometimes I'm not sure I've ever entirely been in my body (except when there is pain)!  Sometimes I am able to experience some of the sensations and states I associate with receiving reiki, and I have not been able to achieve that before on my own to that extent.

Thanks for all your replies. Lots to think about. Whats kind of dawning on me is that there are no concrete answers to a lot of the things I want to know, at least not in this life. By all appearances, those on the other side don't have the answers, or don't agree on the answers, either. What that means I don't know, unless life and death is just a small incremental step in an eternal evolution. Its quite disconcerting to me, as I was raised to believe that one needed to know the truth and have all their ducks in a row while here on Earth as when you die your fate is sealed. I always wonder in the back of my mind if there isn't a big "gotcha" moment coming - but then what kind of God would do that.

Lucy: I've never attempted an OBE. With 3 teenagers in the house I can barely hear myself think somedays.

I think there was some talk earlier discussion about drugs & spiritual experiences. Here is an interesting account I came across. I'm sure its probably highly metaphorical, but something was definitely happening. What do you make of it?

http://www.nderf.org/NDERF/NDE_Experiences/fred_b_ketamine.htm

Feelings can be treacherous though.

The terms positive and negative are used differently by different people. Some use them to mean effective and effected, and some use them as beneficial and detrimental, and some use them to mean feels good and feels bad. But what is beneficial can feel bad, detrimental may feel good, and effective and effected can be either beneficial or detrimental, and may feel good or bad. And others use them to mean optimistic and pessimistic, or realistic and unrealistic, or to refer to energising emotions and energy draining emotions........ So the terms positive and negative have little meaning anymore.

Feeling close to God can be a deceptive feeling:

Google Islamic beheading videos and watch Muslims feeling close to God while puddling in flowing blood and severing one head after another to the sounds of koranic verses, holy muslim songs, and chants of allah hu akbar (God is great). 


Even love can be a deceptive feeling:

Love can go wrong while feeling quite convinced it is the purest and truest form of love. If love forgets to love others for their freewill, then it becomes not love but an oppressive affection that stifles others, seeks to restrict the ones it claims to love and care for. It oppresses their freewilled life and their potential to freely learn and grow, and ultimately such love becomes hatred that believes itself to be love. And yet all the time it feels itself to be love, feels itself to be right and good and caring.

For example, see the oppressive love of a domineering and manipulative parent who oppresses the life of their “child” through most of their adult life. All the while the parent's love feels and believes itself to be genuine caring love.

The same sort of love is sometimes see in a manipulative controlling spouse of either gender, who treats the other like a puppet, and the marriage becomes a dreadful dance of mutual struggle against each other, rather than mutual helpfulness.

And see the oppressive “caring” and “compassion” of those who like to be seen as society’s do-gooders, telling others which words they can and cannot use, and which thoughts and opinions are acceptable to have, and are always looking out for another item and activity to ban or restrict.
 
Such oppression and suffering inflicted on others by deluded love, caring, compassion, that feels itself to be so good and right, but does not appreciate and respect the freewill of others. 
   
And affairs of the heart, so powerful, driven by blinding misplaced love that feels to those involved to be so true, real and perfect. Eventually the blinding bubble of seemingly perfect love bursts, and with restored vision the affair couple look around and see their families and lives in ruins.   



Other feelings can be deceptive too:

Hate (the desire to harm or see harm done to another/s) seldom feels as it is so often portrayed to feel, angry and vicious, but so often feels righteous, energised, motivated, even spiritual, purposeful, and love driven.

Jealousy, that most mad, insane and destructive of emotions/feelings, is always convinced it is love.

Envy so often feels fair minded.

Indignation and rage, always feel justified.   

Anger always feels itself to be in the right. That is what makes is so difficult to give up. Yet it is usually wrong.

The junkie's habit and all the crime and misery that comes of it to himself and others, driven by him holding the value to "feel good" uppermost above all other values. And most of his life, the media, teachers, mothers, youth workers, have all continually emphasised to him the importance of feeling good. Even his drug and alcohol counsellor continues to do so.

People are currently so neurotically obsessed with their feelings and with feeling good that in some democratic states we see the do-gooders/feel-gooders pushing through legislation to prevent people from hurting other people’s feelings.  People play the victim, convince themselves they are traumatised, sue each other and claim compensation, because someone made them feel an unpleasant emotion or feeling. 

Psychologists and counsellors commonly teach clients made vulnerable and receptive by crisis that “there is no truth, only different people’s perception and feelings”, and ask clients “what do your feelings tell you to do?”, and advise clients to “honour your emotions”, and “follow your feelings”, and "your feelings are true", "listen to your feelings", and "don't start your sentences with I think..., but with I feel...", and "don't think - feel".

And as we see, so many marriages are ruined by following extramarital feelings, both carnal and the more powerful feelings that come with affairs of the heart; and so many crimes are committed and jails filled by those who follow their feelings. Feelings that felt so good and right at the time.

So many people reduced to being weak and neurotic by over valuing their emotions and feelings.

Emotions do not make good decisions, and feelings are not good guides. Our worst decisions in life are usually made by following our feelings, and mostly by following feelings that feel good or right and justified.  Ask any prisoner, drug addict, divorcee, or nearly any responsible person whose life has been off the rails, and who has found their better judgement.

  Would also add that there can be, and often is, a difference between emotions and feelings even though they are linked/connected. 

  Feelings are connected to our original way of perceiving and differentiating one experience or consciousness from another.  In other words, it's a Soul and Spirit sense that's always existed.

   Emotions on the other hand, seem to be more related to the body and the physical experience of being human. Emotions are much louder than the more subtle feeling sense. Ironically, stronger emotions can dampen down awareness of the feeling sense.

While positive emotions can be experienced in combo with the Soul and Spirit feeling sense, often times emotions relate more to what some call the ego part of us and tend more towards the limiting then.

The feeling sense is often related to empathy in some way or form.

  The interesting thing about psychopathic types is besides severely lacking conscience and empathy, they also lack a range of both emotional and feeling experiences. They seem to only experience anger/frustration/rage emotionally, otherwise they are flat and practically emotionless.  And forget about the subtle feeling sense.

  There seems to be a general consensus in psychology that for whatever reason(s), there are more psychopathic men than women. But what's interesting is that there have been some studies done, which show that in both gender's cases, there are higher levels of the hormone testosterone in the bodies of those who fall into the psychopathic spectrum.

   Elevated testosterone is well known to increase things like aggression, dominance, sex drive, and dampen down things like empathy, compassion, and intuitive, heart centered feelings of connectedness. 

  Perhaps one of the reasons why there are more male psychopathic types, is because more males in our western and male dominated society are more concerned about developing the intellect, and put less emphasis on things like feelings, empathy, and other traits that are culturally considered more "feminine" in nature. 

  That, and the female body in general, seems to be more wired for empathy and connection.

  Does this mean that women are "better" than men?  Course not, but speaking in a general sense, their respective strengths and weaknesses compliment and balance each others. 

  While the huge majority of men are not psychopathic, many still have an issue with understanding the importance of experiences like the subtle feeling sense, empathy, receptiveness.  Many men are overly polarized to their intellect.

  There is a re-balancing going on, and more individuals of both genders are starting to integrate their inner unconscious Yin or Yang as to become more balanced and merged. 

   Men that are polarized to the intellect and ego, see this as "sissification" of men, and see it only as a negative thing.  They also tend to feel threatened by women that are consciously in touch with and integrating their own inner Yang/Masculine. To such men, women like these are bossy, and often labeled derogatory names like those that begin with b. 

  Truth is, this re-balancing, while it sometimes has it's extreme and imbalanced and thus limited and unwanted reactions, it is the best thing to happen to humanity in a long time.  It's one of the many processes occurring, which will lead, in a probability sense, to a Golden age of high spiritual, collective attunment among humanity. 

  But since Like attracts, begets, and ultimately tends to like Like, those whom are imbalanced and polarized within as to their inner Yin-Yang disconnection, these don't understand nor like this growing, collective process. Ultimately, these types tend to be more slaves of their bodies, which DO tend to be more polarized according to their physical gender, than the informing Soul and Spirit levels of self.  The Soul and Spirit levels of self can become stronger than that of the body and it's influences and urges, but it's not common yet in the consistent sense. 

  Think i may write a separate thread about this interesting topic in relation to Bob Monroe's He/She experience.

Kathy:

When I read your post, I used my conscious mind 95% of the time and my subconscious 5%. When I drive home tonight I will use my... 

Perhaps we can reduce some of the 95% when we realize not all of it is needed.

Briefly re: psychopathy.  The defining elements of same are a severe lack of emotionally felt empathy and severe lack of conscience. But it's determined from a multi point cluster of traits. One can argue though, that those cluster of traits stem from those two fundamental lacks.

  It's also considered a spectrum btw, hence some are more severely psychopathic than others.  Some generally "play by the rules" because they have learned that it benefits them (and keeps them from being discovered by others, because most seem to know they are fundamentally "different"--i know this from reading forums/blogs where such folks frequent and talk about themselves). This does not meant they are virtuous, do gooders in any internal or intention sense. 

  Re: testosterone link, i did over simplify it, but there is enough research to suggest there is some kind of average link.  Does it apply to all cases? Most likelly not.  Does it "cause" psychopathy, most likely not.  Also, there are people with higher than typical testosterone whom are not technically psychopathic.

  Some of the studies i have read, deal with it indirectly. For example, there are a few studies to date that find a link between unusually wide faces in men and at the same time tendencies to cheat and/or lie.  Other linked studies indicate those same men with unusually wide faces also tend to have higher than average testosterone levels.

  If you would like to discuss this more, feel free to bring this over to the He/She thread i started.
 

Seagull:

I figure you know what doorways can symbolize. Yellow can symbolize will power.

Quote:


Those are popular/Hollywood opinions of psychopathy and testosterone.

There exist contrary views by many who work in the forensic industry and have working knowledge.    

There are thousands of studies on these subjects. Most are just class exercises for psych students to practice on each other doing studies and publishing. They are full of holes. 

Psychology has a powerful morally corrupt element in it who are always doing studies to suggest that those they dislike are psychopaths, and that testosterone is the hormone that causes anger and violence in men. It is mostly ignorance, lies and propaganda, but what can we expect from those who actively claim and teach that there is no such thing as moral truth. 

If they are wrong or lying they don't have to answer for it, so they just keep putting out the claims. That is the nature of psychology, it is not based on measurable tangibles as other sciences are, it is based on statistics which are underpinned by fuzzy or absent definitions and categories, and usually non-scientific method leaving much room for dispute. Psychology is not a science, it is a fashion parade of ever changing fads, phrases, catch cries and buzzwords. Psychology is never held accountable for mistakes its makes. Over the last 60 years psychology/sociology has come up with different outrageous models and claims about human behaviour every 5 to 10 years, and each time they do, the old claim and all the buzz-speak that went with it gets left behind and is mocked by those in the industry as being outdated, and the present claim is held up as the "Truth", but that "Truth" soon passes too and inturn gets mocked by the same fickle people. They change their psychological fads and buzz-speak like they change their fashion in clothes, shoes and hairstyles.

Not only is the industry not held accountable but individuals are not held accountable either to the degree they are in the real sciences. If a forensic clinician documents that a prisoner is suitable for release and he is released and murders again, then the psychologist is not held accountable. An engineer though, who says a structure will hold up a bridge will be held accountable if it fails.

The medical industry, like engineering, is expected to get results and is held accountable. In medicine natural testosterone (not synthetic) is well known as a hormone of calmness and confident friendliness, and is often prescribed for men with anger problems, which can arise when testosterone levels drop for any reason. Psychologists though, being the testosterone haters that they are, often claim that the less testosterone that men have then the calmer, friendlier and more "socially adjusted" men will be. That is nonsense, of course. Psychology can say what it likes and is seldom if ever held accountable, but medicine is accountable and gets results.