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Finding Light in The Dark Night

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A Dark Night of the Soul and the Discovery of Meaning

By Thomas Moore
Published in Spring | Summer 2015

Anyone may go through a period of sadness or challenge that is so deep-seated and tenacious that it qualifies as a dark night of the soul. Not long ago I was giving a talk at a university when a man shouted at me from back in the crowd: “I’m terribly depressed. It’s been years. Help me.” I shouted back my email address. In his voice and body language I could see that this man was not caught in some passing depression. His life was broken by some loss, failure, or long-forgotten emotional wound that left him in a desperately dark place.

I reserve the expression ‘dark night of the soul’ for a dark mood that is truly life-shaking and touches the foundations of experience, the soul itself. But sometimes a seemingly insignificant event can give rise to a dark night: You may miss a train and not attend a reunion that meant much to you. Often a dark night has a strong symbolic quality in that it points to a deeper level of emotion and perhaps a deeper memory that gives it extra meaning. With dark nights you always have to be alert for the invisible memories, narratives, and concerns that may not be apparent on the surface.

Faced with a dark night, many people treat it like an illness, like depression. They may take medication or go into counseling looking for a cause. It can be useful to search for the roots of a dark night, but in my experience the best way to deal with it is to find the concrete action or decision that it is asking for.

Engaging the Night

A dark night of the soul is a kind of initiation, taking you from one phase of life into another. You may have several dark nights in the course of your life because you are always becoming more of a person and entering life more fully. At least, that is the hope.

One simple rule is that a truly deep dark night requires an extraordinary development in life. One outstanding example is Abraham Lincoln. With his early life surrounded by death and loneliness and his adult life weighed down by a war in which thousands of young men died, he was a seriously melancholic man who, in spite of or through his dark night, became an icon of wisdom and leadership. One theory is that he escaped his melancholy in his efforts for his country, but another possibility is that the very darkness of his life—he once said, “If there’s a worse place than hell, I’m in it.”—was the ground out of which his leadership grew.

As a therapist, I have worked with people profoundly sad and discouraged, and I join with them in looking for ways to transform that heavy mood into a weighty life. Contemporary people often don’t take their lives seriously enough. This tendency might be an aspect of the cult of celebrity, where we lose sight of our own importance by making too much of it in others.

In the archetypal psychotherapy that I practice, we always say: Go with the symptom. I don’t look for quick escapes from the pain or good distracting alternatives. I try to imagine how a symptom, like a long-standing dark night, might be re-imagined and even lived out in a way that is not literally depressive. As far back as the Middle Ages at least, dark moods were considered to be the work of Saturn, a spirit symbolized by a planet far out in the solar system. He was cold, lonely, and heavy, but he was also the source of wisdom and artistic genius. Look through history and you will find a great number of creative men and women who have struggled with the Saturnine humor.

This ancient idea that a dark night may be connected with genius and inspiration could help us today as we try to be constructive with a Saturnine disposition, like Lincoln’s, or a period of smoky moodiness. We might imagine it as the root and basis of an engagement with life that could give meaning and purpose. This doesn’t necessarily mean that eventually the dark spirit will go away, but it may have a counterweight—some extraordinary creative activity and involvement in life—that will make it more than bearable and may diminish it.

With our contemporary view of anything that looks like depression, we think: I’ll never be happy, never have a good relationship, never accomplish anything. But with the medieval image of Saturn, we might instead tell ourselves: A dark night is the sign of a high calling. My pain and loneliness will prepare me for my destiny.

Finding the Gift in Darkness

There are many examples of men and women who endured unimaginable ordeals and yet contributed in a striking way to humanity’s progress. Nelson Mandela was in prison for 27 years under harsh conditions, yet he never lost his vision and sense of destiny. One of his younger fellow prisoners said of him: “The point about Nelson, of course, is that he has a tremendous presence, apart from his bearing, his deportment and so on. He’s a person who’s got real control over his behavior. He is also quite conscious of the kind of seriousness he radiates.” This is dark night talk—presence and seriousness, the key gifts of Saturn—as a long tradition holds. Mandela’s dark night was an actual imprisonment, not a mood. Still, he teaches how to deal with a dark night. Don’t waste time in illusions and wishes. Take it on. Keep your sense of worth and power. Keep your vision intact. Let your darkness speak and give its tone to your bearing and expression.

The regenerative power of nature grows more beautiful after a devastating forest fire at Yellowstone Park in 1988. photography | Wikimedia Commons, Jim Peaco

The regenerative power of nature grows more beautiful after a devastating forest fire at Yellowstone Park in 1988. photography | Wikimedia Commons, Jim Peaco

As strange as it may sound, there is a temptation in a dark night to slip into enjoyment of the pain and to identify with your emotions and moods. “I’m a lonely person. I’m depressed. Help me.” One striking quality we see in men and women who are dealing with their dark nights effectively is a lack of masochistic surrender to the mood, which can be forceful and dominating.

Mandela had “control over his behavior.” He didn’t succumb. It’s important to live through the dark night, acknowledge it, notice its qualities, and be affected by it. At the same time, it is not useful to be too attached to it or to let it dominate. You don’t want to be the hero who slays dragons and tries to obliterate the darkness, but you do need all the strength of heart you can muster.

While giving a dark night its due, you can also cultivate a love of life and joy in living that doesn’t contradict the darkness. You can be dedicated to your work and your vision for humanity and also feel overwhelmed by the suffering in the world. To do this it helps to have a philosophy of life that understands the creative coming together of conflicting moods. The rule is simple: Human beings can do more than one thing at a time. You can acknowledge your darkness and still find some joy.

An example of the dark night leading to a transformative presence in the world is Maya Angelou, who went from not speaking for five or six years as a child out of guilt and the wounds of abuse to reciting the inaugural poem for Bill Clinton and inspiring millions to make something of their own dark nights. In all her public appearances, Angelou showed both the pain and the joy that shaped her mission in life. She carried her pain throughout her life and yet her joy seemed to increase with her impact on men and especially women around the world.

Angelou’s experience demonstrates in an intriguing way how a dark night might take away your ‘voice’ and then give it back with added power. The question is, how do you go from a dark night to having a positive impact on the world, thus giving your own life purpose?

The first step is to embrace the darkness, take it to heart, winnow out any subtle innuendos of resistance. Then find any images that are trapped in the thick dark mood or situation. Those images may hold the clue to your release and future service. Angelou lost her voice, a fascinating symptom and a strong image, and then became known worldwide for her voice. The cure lies in the illness, the hint at future activity within the symptom. If you tone down the dark elements because they are painful and discouraging, you may also hide the gifts that are there for you.

The Return of Aliveness: The Dark Night of the Soul

By Eckhart Tolle

The ‘dark night of the soul’ is a term that goes back a long time. Yes, I have also experienced it. It is a term used to describe what one could call a collapse of a perceived meaning in life… an eruption into your life of a deep sense of meaninglessness. The inner state in some cases is very close to what is conventionally called depression. Nothing makes sense anymore, there’s no purpose to anything. Sometimes it’s triggered by some external event—some disaster perhaps. The death of someone close to you could trigger it, especially premature death—for example, if your child dies. Or the meaning that you had given your life, your activities, your achievements, where you are going, what is considered important, and the meaning that you had given your life for some reason collapses.

It can happen if something happens that you can’t explain away anymore, some disaster, which seems to invalidate the meaning that your life had before. Really what has collapsed is the whole conceptual framework for your life. That results in a dark place.
There is the possibility that you emerge out of it into a transformed state of consciousness. Life has meaning again, but it’s no longer a conceptual meaning that you can necessarily explain. Quite often it’s from there that people awaken out of their conceptual sense of reality, which has collapsed.

They awaken into something deeper. A deeper sense of purpose or connectedness with a greater life that is not dependent on explanations or anything conceptual. It’s a kind of re-birth. The dark night of the soul is a kind of death. What dies is the egoic sense of self. Of course, death is always painful, but nothing real has actually died—only an illusory identity. Now, it is probably the case that some people who’ve gone through this transformation realize that they had to go through that in order to bring about a spiritual awakening. Often it is part of the awakening process, the death of the old self and the birth of the true self.

You arrive at a place of conceptual meaninglessness. Or one could say a state of ignorance—where things lose the meaning that you had given them, which was all conditioned and cultural and so on.

Then you can look upon the world without imposing a mind-made framework of meaning. It looks, of course, as if you no longer understand anything. That’s why it’s so scary when it happens to you, instead of you actually consciously embracing it. It can bring about the dark night of the soul. You now go around the Universe without any longer interpreting it compulsively, as an innocent presence. You look upon events, people, and so on with a deep sense of aliveness. You sense the aliveness through your own sense of aliveness, but you are not trying to fit your experience into a conceptual framework anymore.

Another important strategy is to avoid making the dark night too personal, too focused on yourself. Yes, you feel it intimately and alone. But it could still have more to do with the suffering of the world than with yourself. Maybe dark nights are generally less personal than they feel. At any one time, beings on the planet are suffering. The planet itself is suffering; it is going through a dark night constantly. If you live in a place where children are hungry and dying in wars and in domestic violence, you are within the realm of the world’s dark night. Listen to political leaders deny climate change and you worry about the future, not of the planet on which you live but the planetary being of which you are a living part. If you can stretch your moral imagination to perceive this suffering, then you will have the energy and focus to work toward a transformation.

Waking Up

By definition, visionary people imagine utopia, a word that means both ‘no-place’ and ‘good-place.’ It is an imagined state of the world in which people are free of their struggle, where at least the basic insecurities and inequalities have been dealt with. But oddly, it takes the pain and despair of a dark night to envision utopia.

Think about it, you wouldn’t be compelled to imagine a perfected life unless you were steeped in its imperfection. The emptiness of the dark night transforms into the no-place of a wonderful world. If you don’t feel the hopelessness of a dark night, you will probably float through life identifying unconsciously with the values and expectations of the culture. You won’t know that there is something wrong, something that calls for a response from you. Personally, you may not feel your being. You may eventually decide that you’re a nobody, for you become a somebody by identifying with the world outside you. Self-realization is not a private psychological achievement managed by a strong will and a hygienic attitude. A strong sense of self emerges when you own and activate the awareness that you are your world. A mystical sensibility and social action go together. Through an essential shift in imagination you realize that you are not the one suffering; the world is.

The real stunner is that when you begin to serve the world, your darkness changes. It doesn’t go away completely; nor should it. It continues to feed your vision of utopia and your frustration at the imperfection of it all. But your personal darkness converts into anger at injustice and then into compassionate vision and effective action. The darkness and the vision are two parts of one flowing movement.

Maybe it isn’t that your darkness eases but that your ego investment in it diminishes. It feels as though it goes away because you’ve been grasping it. There may be a degree of love for the darkness and a disdain for hope. You don’t want the challenge of being alive and engaging the world. It may be easier to sink into the pit. Some people resist participating in the transformation of the world because they glimpse the challenge in it. They will have to give up a long-held philosophy of easy, comfortable pragmatism and, maybe for the first time in their lives, feel the world’s suffering.

You see this pattern of waking up from pleasant unconsciousness to awareness of suffering in the story of the Buddha, and one of the key words Jesus uses in his teaching, not often pointed out by his followers, is ‘wake up.’ But waking up is also entering your dark night instead of remaining in the oblivion of avoidance. You do wake up to a joyful message, the meaning of the word ‘Gospel,’ but the dark night is always part of the picture, the other side of the coin.

The best source in classical spiritual literature for describing the paradox of darkness and vision is the Tao Te Ching, where on every page you are invited to live without polarization. Chapter 14 is a good example: “Above, it is not bright. Below, it is not dark.” ‘It’ is everything. Below, where you might expect darkness, it’s bright. Above, where you think you’d find light, it’s dark. Keep this paradox in mind and you will be neither a sentimental idealist nor a cynical pessimist. You will be part of the transformation of it all because it is happening in you.

from:    http://www.kosmosjournal.org/article/a-dark-night-of-the-soul-and-the-discovery-of-meaning/

We Are Always

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Quantum souls. Part one

Posted by Angela Dijanic on

Quantum souls. Part one

The following article is the first in a three-part series dealing with scientific evidence supporting the existence of souls and an afterlife. There may be excerpts from A Quantum Soul in a Newtonian World (Outskirts Press, 2016) and The Quantum Afterlife (due out Fall of 2016).

  1. Science is not the word of … umm … god.
  2. Debunking the debunkers – there can be no proof, but there is scientific evidence, get over it.
  3. TBA

1: Science is not the word of …umm… god.

Ever since the death of my son on September 2, 2014, I have been struggling with the concept of the soul, and by extension the existence of an afterlife. I wish I could believe in it. I want to believe in it. But, as a scientist, I am the type that needs rational arguments to convince me, and it seemed that the soul was too abstract for my mind. I am not one to resort to blind faith to believe in the soul. I needed evidence.  I needed proof.

I was navigating the web one night, lost in despair, wanting nothing more than to be done with the pain, looking for this evidence – this proof – and I came upon a response from a Rabbi whose name I never did get. The Rabbi was responding to a young man who had lost his brother seven years earlier, who was looking for the same answers that I was.  The Rabbi stated that even if our deceased loved ones were cloned to perfect identical duplication, down to the precise memories of your life together, something would still be missing. That even though that replicate might have your loved one’s expressions and thoughts, voice and mannerisms, s/he would be missing the spark that is unique to your loved one. And, that, he said, is what soul is.

I read his response over and over again. I realized that the soul – our soul – is the who of a person, rather than the what of a person. That my son had really only left his physical existence, but that he was still there (here?), somewhere, and that we will at some point, in some form, be together again. That we still were. Then I became aware of my own soul, and the souls of others who had passed, and I began to feel a universal tug; and my entire outlook on life, death, and the universe changed forever.  I have walked between the worlds since, one foot in this physical, or Newtonian world, and one in the spirit realm, where quantum properties and characteristics are the norm.

I started to really pay attention to what other people were saying and doing, I began to thoroughly observe, with full sensory acceptance, how animals and plants interacted.  I had been a biologist for decades, but only now was I really seeing what life and death were.  And I was not alone.

With very few exceptions, the people I passively observed and actively interviewed said that they knew that there was something. The phrase life force was used quite a bit.  But when I asked them if they thought this was their soul, they would hesitate. Some answered yes outright but others did not want to get hung up on religious semantics. They didn’t want to associate this spiritual ideal with stringent religious dogma. Very few defined soul using scientific definitions.

Why, I wondered, are so few people doing research into this, our only truth? We are all born to die. Dying and death are the only absolutes and yet we would rather sweep the concept under the rug and belittle the idea that there is something that enters the body upon birth and leaves upon dying. I decided right then and there to devote the rest of my life to investigating and researching the existence of the soul and all that that entails. Because I am a scientist, I will use scientific methods.  It’s what I know and what I am comfortable with. But I also acknowledge that science is limited and limiting and as such is not the only way to investigate something.

Those of us who are conducting research into the realm of the beyond, other dimensions, soul’s journey, are blackballed from the rest of the scientific world. People would rather believe that I have lost my mind due to the trauma of losing my child then that I have been enlightened to what really happens upon dying.  The fact of the matter is that the reality lies between the two.  What is most interesting to me is that these same people who like to judge others, who place their own self-righteousness in place as some marker of truth and sanity, claim to believe, absolutely, in other theories and hypotheses which have not been proven, so why this particular bias? For them, it’s ok to know that atoms exist or that DNA is an absolute truth, when much of the science behind both shows only evidence of the existence, but never proof. Nothing in the universe is certain. Nothing.

It is highly probable that atoms and DNA exist. The evidence backs that up. But it is also highly probable that souls exist. The evidence is abundant on this theory as well.  My book, A Quantum Soul in a Newtonian World, goes into detail on this, as does its sequel, A Quantum Afterlife.

The nay-sayers will say that our thoughts and life energy are simply extensions of the mind, but they can’t define exactly what the mind is.  They say that it is all about impulses and sparks within the neurological network that makes up the brain, but they have no idea what that means either. No one does. Not fully. Not yet.

They say that we can prove thoughts and emotions as simple brain functions because we can record the changes in brainwaves as they occur. But when near death experiences occur, and complete cessation of brainwaves are recorded, and yet thoughts are still processed, they would rather believe that a dead brain can have hallucinations than that intelligent energy is somehow being transferred, as in a soul, from one dimension to another dimension.

They will not or cannot accept that there must be an energy, one that we cannot fully measure yet, that makes cells function and communicate, and that drives biological and chemical processes.  There is nothing supernatural about our souls. There is nothing religious about the existence of our true selves. There is really nothing scientific about our souls other than that science is an acceptable means for providing evidence of the possibility of the thing.

When the quantum sciences came along and challenged the cogs and wheels mentality of Newtonian thinkers, they once again were selective in placing limitations. But until the advent of the internet and social media, it was a very hush-hush thing shared only within the science world and only within closed circles. Now it’s not so easy to hide facts and evidence; and it is much easier to share information and experiences.

Through the quantum sciences, in particular quantum biology, evidence of the existence of the very small and non-linear – those things that surround us but are invisible and behave in seemingly magical ways – can be gleaned.

The idea that we are quantum beings having materialistic experiences is a challenging paradigm for us because we were born into a three dimensional linearly aligned physicality. And for too long, that physicality has been defined within the limitations of Newtonian Laws, or rather by the followers of those laws, often times  with their own interpretations – laws that place us as cogs and wheels in an enormous superficial machine with little room for forces beyond simple matter.

But we are not superficial machines that run on cogs and wheels. We are complex organisms made up of matter that is in turn made up of energy. Our physical bodies may fit neatly into Newton’s very limited world, but the force that drives these bodies, the intelligent energy that is behind thought and emotion, life and death, can only, for now, be explained through quantum science; and through the technologies we have not yet discovered or mastered.

Because of the nature of energy, we are very limited in our understanding of it, and so it becomes this magical thing that we either believe in or not… for now. But remember magic is simply science that has not yet been defined. Thus, anything that is too nebulous to understand, at the time, is labeled magic or philosophy.

We need to remember that at some point in history, in fact several points in history, everything we consider science now was considered magic then. By extension, everything that we consider magical now will be considered scientific in the future as technology evolves and understanding is gleaned. Even what we thought we understood, through scientific methodology, has changed. How many theories and hypotheses have been blown out of the water as we gain better insights?

We must remember that science is merely a human construct in and of itself. We fall under the excuse that magic is of gods, but science is of men. Not everyone believes in gods. Not everyone trusts the wisdoms of men.

We made science. We decided that magic and faith weren’t enough to go by so we created a system that would be more succinct and consistent, an attempt to even the playing field. But that succinctness and consistency is defined by us. We decide what succinct means.  We decide what consistent means. Humans created language. Then we fit our scientific ideals within those constructs. We are making this up as we go along.

Always, the various disciplines of science, regardless of type, focus or methodology, were developed through the minds, hands and hearts of humans using the tools available to us at the time- tools that we either discovered or created, like fire, hammers, and computers.

And, because science is a human construct, it is at the mercy of its creators. Just like magic. Like small gods giving birth to worlds, the creator and the created fused; and the philosophies grew with their followers. And so too did the limitations.

And yet everyone wants scientific proof of anything being espoused. Until they are given that proof, they label the entity as metaphysical, paranormal, or supernatural. But science is not about proof. It is about evidence. Science cannot prove anything because proof is subjective. The only person who can prove anything to me is me. Only I can decide if something is true or not. The evidence of the thing is objective. Evidence cannot buckle under opinion. It’s just data. Personal bias cannot sway evidence. It doesn’t matter what you think, the facts are just the facts.

Selective wiles and cyclical arguments are the hallmarks of close-minded, biased, judgmental people. Why do we care what fanatics from either extreme believe or do not believe? They are ignorant bullies who think that by using words bigger than the ones you use makes them superior and therefore they must be right. They may not be right.

We have been taught to think in terms of human experiences and not soul experiences. This is a necessity since we are in a physical form in a dimension that is based on time and space. Unfortunately, we get tangled up in this physicality and forget how to communicate that which is most important to our existence. Perhaps that’s part of the experience. We simply need to break through the static.

We are quantum souls living in a Newtonian world. Science is not the end all to be all, but it’s what we have so let’s use it responsibly recognizing the limitations.

from:   http://thewatchers.adorraeli.com/2016/07/03/quantum-souls-part-one/

Perils of Empathy

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5 Ways to Stop Absorbing Negative Energy from Others

EnergyAnna Hunt, Staff Writer
Waking Times

With empathy, the ability to recognize and feel other people’s emotions, comes the disadvantage of also absorbing the suffering and negativity of the others around you. When this occurs, your ability to function at your best can be significantly impacted. Even a person who is not so empathic can be affected energetically when around negative or dramatic people.

Absorbing other people’s negative energy can be just as toxic on a person as ingesting unhealthy food, and perhaps even more noticeably draining. Thus, learning how to stop this from happening can be a valuable skill. Here are five methods that you can use so you absorb less negative energy from others around you.

1) Be Selective About the People You Allow into Your Life

You have to come to terms that not everyone will like you, and you don’t have to become friends with everyone that you meet. You do not need to pressure yourself into befriending everyone you meet, either at work, though existing friends, or via your kids. Of course you want to be polite, but trust your intuition when meeting new people and don’t ever feel like you need to spend time with people just because you’ve come to know them by association.

Furthermore, if you find yourself often needing to vent about a person, have a friend that is consistently negative about life, or feel like someone in your life is regularly taking advantage of you or is unkind to you, then perhaps it is time to create some distance. Some friendships or relationships are just not good for you, and you have to be able to accept that. Once you do, you can let go of the friends and acquaintances who dump their negativity on you.

Learning to let go and saying “no” to people who do not deserve your time and attention allows you more time for the ones that do, including your family and YOURSELF.

2) Don’t Try Please Everyone

We all have only so many hours in one day, so be selective about who receives your time. Don’t waste it on people who don’t seem to care about you, give you a hard time, or are overly critical of you. Just as you won’t like certain individuals, there will be some that don’t like you or do not treat you kindly.

Focus on developing relationships that seem to thrive naturally, versus working on getting people to like you who naturally don’t gravitate to you. The latter will not only leave you drained, they will probably affect how you perceive yourself.

3) Beware of Energy Vampires

As already mentioned, you may have existing friends that are always negative about life, but consider that some people are can be even more toxic. These types could be dubbed energy vampires because they suck you dry of all positive energy and leave you with all their negativity. That is what keeps them going.

Beware of energy vampires who always use negative words and dump negative emotions onto you. Notice which “friends” use pessimistic language or treat you like a soundboard for their negative feelings. You are likely absorbing all of their negativity every time you see them.

This doesn’t mean stop being there for a friend in need, but pay attention to the ones that take advantage of a kind ear or are inclined to always use negative language. Let them know how you feel about all the pessimism. If these “friends” don’t understand that they are draining you, then perhaps they are not really your friends.

4) Be Responsible for Yourself

You are the only person that has control over how you feel. In any situation, you have the choice of how you react and what you do. Some say it takes years of training to control your feelings, but it all starts with awareness, which you can practice right now.

Taking responsibility for yourself means that you have to start becoming aware of how you feel when certain people are around you. And then are not afraid to take action. If you spend time with someone who makes you feel bad or leaves you drained, it is time to create some distance between you and that person.

Don’t be a victim, because you have the power of how you experience life. You will absorb more goodness and less negativity if you really reflect on how people, places and situations make you feel, and then take action to change what does not serve you.

5) Spend Time Alone

For some reason the Western society has come to denigrate personal characteristics such as introversion, shyness, timidity, etc. However, time alone, and the personal discovery that happens during this time, can be quite healing and regenerating.

For some, solitude is quite difficult as it is a time when a person starts to really look at what’s happening with their own self. Yet it is necessary if you are to cultivate the awareness you need to identify when you absorb negative energy and who in your life is an energy vampire.

Remember simple tools such as breathing slowly, quiet meditation, reading a good book, and spending time in nature. They are all available to you so you can enjoy solitude. Use these tools when you are ready to take action to rid yourself of unwanted energetic toxicity and reinforce yourself for yet another day.

from:    http://www.wakingtimes.com/2016/07/02/5-ways-to-stop-absorbing-negative-energy-from-others/

Benefits of Meditation

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Meditation Makes Us More Aware Of Our Unconscious, Study Suggests

There’s just so much we aren’t aware of.

06/29/2016 02:24 pm ET |
  • Bahar Gholipour Senior Writer, The Huffington Post

    • iMrSquid via Getty Images
    “People can vary in how much access they have to the unconscious events happening in their brain,” says psychologist Peter Lush, whose new study suggests that meditation gives us better access to those unconscious states.

    Imagine being in a dark room holding a flashlight. You can only see where you’re pointing the light, and only what the light reaches. This room is your mind, and what the flashlight reveals is your limited awareness of it.

    But a new study suggests that people who practice meditation may extend the boundaries of how aware they are of their unconscious intentions. In other words, they might have a bigger flashlight.

    As scientists are increasingly realizing, our conscious awareness is only the tip of the iceberg — a lot of brain processes for which we take credit are in fact happening under the hood of our awareness. Some of this was shown in classical experiments in the 1980s carried out by psychologist Benjamin Libet: In those experiments, people were instructed to press a button at their leisure and watch the clock as they did it, then report the exact timing of their decision to press the button. However, electrodes placed on their scalps picked up on brain activity in areas controlling physical movement starting to ramp up a couple of hundred milliseconds before the time participants reported as the time of making the decision to move.

    This finding sparked a series of follow-up experiments and raised big questions. If the unconscious brain has already made the choice to move the finger, is our sense of agency only the story we tell ourselves after the fact? Do we have any say in the matter, or are we merely puppets?

    There’s no clear-cut answer to that question. But in the debates that followed, many researchers have argued that those experiments didn’t really measure free will. Instead, they measured how much high-level awareness we have when it comes to small things happening in our minds, such as intending to move a humble finger.

    Does high-level awareness ring a bell? Mindfulness meditation is supposed to increase exactly that — our awareness of internal processes, or “metacognition.” A meditator practices control over what to attend to (the breath, for example) and decides what other experiences are irrelevant and have to be let go (such as thoughts that pop up).

    “Mindfulness meditation is thus intrinsically an exercise in the (metacognitive) control and monitoring of mental processes,” psychologist Peter Lush and his colleagues at the University of Sussex in Brighton, U.K., wrote in their study, which was published on June 21 in the journal Neuroscience of Consciousness.

    Lush and his team decided to test experienced meditators using a version of Libet’s experiments (minus the brain electrodes). They recruited 11 long-term meditators with at least three years of meditation practice and 36 undergraduate students without significant meditation practice.

    It turned out that experienced meditators seemed to be quicker in picking up on their intention to move the finger, reporting their intention to move about 150 milliseconds before the physical movement. Other participants reported their intention about 70 milliseconds before the movement.

    “We interpret this as meditators having an earlier access to their unconscious states,” Lush told The Huffington Post. “An intention can be unconscious. It’s only when you have a thought about that unconscious intention that it becomes conscious. And people can vary in how much access they have to the unconscious events happening in their brain.”

    The team also tested the degree to which the non-meditator participants were prone to hypnosis. While it’s not clear how exactly hypnosis works or even whether it’s a real phenomenon, researchers believe that it is possible for some people to enter a mental state in which they intentionally and voluntarily let go of their sense of agency.

    There are standard tests to figure out the level of this ability in people. Generally, about 10 percent of the population is categorized as highly hypnotizable. Another 10 percent is categorized as very hard to hypnotize. Everybody else is somewhere in the middle.

    The researchers found that those who could be easily hypnotized reported the timing of their intention to move later than those who were hard to hypnotize. In other words, people with high hypnotizability didn’t have early access to their unconscious intentions.

    Lush emphasized that these results don’t mean that meditators have more “free will” or that hypnotizable people have less. Rather, the findings suggest “that highly hypnotizable people on the one hand, and meditators on the other, lie at two ends of a spectrum of metacognition.”

    The study suggests that meditation can provide earlier access to our unconscious states, the researchers said. But to be certain that meditators didn’t start out with more aware brains in the first place, the team is conducting another study in which amateurs are trained in meditation, to see if that changes their performance.

    from:    http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/meditation-awareness_us_5773fe84e4b0352fed3ea9a4?cps=gravity_2676_-6368728665752109738&ir=GPS+for+the+Soul&kvcommref=mostpopular&section=us_gps-for-the-soul&utm_hp_ref=gps-for-the-soul

    6 Steps to Lighten Up

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    How To Get Out Of A Funk In 6 Easy Steps

    grounding with earthby Sarah Petruno
    Shamana

    You’ve been having a bad morning, a bad day, a bad week – your car wouldn’t start on the way to work, then it started snowing and your forgot your ice scraper, you forgot your lunch, and your favorite food cart was not there, then, when you finally got home, you realized you forgot to turn the slow cooker on this morning.

    This is miserable! And the temptation, to remain sulky the rest of the day, evening, or the next few days, feeling down on your luck, focusing on all the terrible, is very high. We all do it – we have a series of crappy events, then, we just want to sit down and feel sorry for ourselves.

    While this is certainly an option, there is an alternative. We can’t change what happened, but we can change how it made us feel. And while yes, you’ve heard this a million times before, there IS a way that you really can do this. With practice, in as little as 10 minutes or less, you can quickly energetically heal yourself and shift your perception, turning your crappy day, into an opportunity to realize all that you are grateful for, and give yourself a second chance to change your mood and outlook. All it takes, is to realize you are in a funk, then decide you don’t want to be anymore. Then, follow the steps below – and boom – your sad day cloud is lifted, and you begin to feel better and motivated to give it another shot. This process, is a quick, simplified version of a grounding and clearing meditation. Get out of a funk, ground, and clear your energy in 10 minutes or less. So, how about it?

    How to Get Out of a Funk – In 6 Easy Steps

    1. Ground Yourself.

    This is the first step in working with energy, and as we begin, you’re becoming a self energy healer. The process of grounding is essential to all spiritual and energetic healing practices. Simply, you place a grounding cord that is connected to the seat of yourself to the Divine Energy located deep within the earth. I call this Earth Energy. This anchors you to the Earth, and allows you access to receive Earth Energy – it also provides a firm foundation to connect you, with the Divine Mother Earth. If you’re connecting upward, you need to be firmly rooted on the Earth, because, well, that’s where you live at this time and this is where most of your energy comes from. Without grounding before connecting upward, you could lift off and become lifted, which can create feelings of aloofness and disconnection. Grounding yourself allows you to in essence, pull it together, calm down, feel a sense of stability, and security – you’re connecting with sacred Earth Energy here, and in doing so, a sense of calmness, centeredness and stability is always the result. Seated in a chair, with your feet on the floor and your hands in the receptive position, take a few deep breathes, and while doing so, imagine a tree trunk starting at the base of your spine, encompassing your legs, and traveling down into the earth. The roots of this tree extend deeper and deeper until you reach the center of the Earth, where your roots will reach the center of the Earth, the location of the source of Earth Energy. Imagine this center as a glowing ball, and allow your roots to wrap around it a few times. Now, imagine your roots traveling back up to you. With each deep breath, imagine you are taking up white Earth Energy into your roots, and drawing it up to your body. You are now accessing Earth Energy. Imagine the energy flowing up your roots until it reaches your feet – and see it travel upward through your thighs, torso, chest, until it reaches the top of your head, the Crown Chakra. Imagine it flowing out of the top of your head, like water from a glorious crystal fountain, the blowhole of a whale, a geyser eruption. Allow all or some of this Energy to cycle back down from your head to your feet, in a loop, and travel back down to the center of the Earth. Complete this loop 2-3 times, to ensure that Earth Energy is completely flowing through your physical body. You are now grounded.

    2. Remove Foreign Energy.

    Now, it’s time to remove all the energy that you have absorbed or has been transferred onto you, that is no longer serving you. For now, we will be focusing on how to remove it the foreign, negative, not-you energy. This happens in 2 parts – an internal removal of foreign energy, and an external, aura focused energy removal. Internal Energy Removal. Using the circuit of Earth Energy that is now flowing through you, you can remove, or flush out, the foreign energy inside your physical body that is no longer serving you. To do this, simply imagine that as the Earth Energy cycles back down to your feet from your crown, the strength, and energetic pull of the flow is yanking out all the little black and grey wisps of energy that are no longer needed, and flushing them out, back down to the center of the earth, where they will be cleansed and purified. If you are familiar with Biore Pore Strips, the process is similar to that, except internal. The energy no longer serving you, is being pulled out and flushed away by the flow of Earth Energy. Aura Energy Removal. In addition to the foreign energy existing externally, foreign energy also attaches itself and sticks to your aura, as part of a natural process of the energy that exists all around us, radiating from each being who may cross your path. After you have finished grounding, and the internal energy flush, now is time to take a peek at your aura, your external energy, and see what it looks like. Your Aura is your energetic shell that exists around you physical body, imagine it now, as a golden egg that extends all around you, including above your head and beneath your feet. Imagine what it looks like, and imagine now, where foreign energy, energy that does not belong to you, exists. This foreign energy, can be any place surrounding you, and typically looks black or grey in color. The shapes can look like small rocks, boulders, spikes, helmets, clouds, shields, capes, or even as a dusty covering of your aura. As you identify each piece of foreign energy, work your way through removing it. Simply imagine yourself pulling it off, brushing it away, throwing off the black cape, or tossing aside the small rock – imagine each piece falling to the ground. Continue this procedure until all of the foreign energy is removed

    3. Cut Cords.

    You are grounded, cleared of all foreign energy, now it’s time to cut your cords. Cords are energetic attachments to other individuals, places, or situations – anytime you think of or converse with someone or something, there is the potential that an energetic cord has attached to you in this single interaction. It is either drawing on your energy, sending you energy, or both. For the purposes of this exercise, we are not going to find out who the cords are attached to or what they are doing, we just going to remove any that exist, all at once. Sometimes, it’s really not important who it is, or what it’s doing, it just needs to go – and that’s what we’re going to do here. Any energy connection to any individual creates an exchange, and with this flow in continual motion, your ocean may never be still. Grounding, is a process of stilling the ocean within you. To do this, imagine your hand out in front of you, it is grabbing onto a bundle of ropes. Each rope is a cord that is attached to you, in some way or another. All the ropes could be connected to you as a spider web in all directly with many strings, or as a single bundle to one or two sources. Now, bundle them all up, and now, you are holding onto this rope bundle. Now, yank the bundle of ropes quickly and forcefully, removing all the ropes and their attachments from you, as though they’ve been plucked rapidly by tweezers. Now, you are holding a bundle of ropes, and on one end, your hand frees each end of the rope and their attachments to you, but they are still connected on the other side – to everyone, and everything else. Give your rope bundle another quick yank, detaching the ropes from everything else they’re connected to on the other side. In your hand now, is the rope bundle, and a pile of loose rope lies on the ground. Drop your rope bundle aside, and toss it to the ground. Done. Cords removed.

    4. Call your Energy Back.

    You’ve now detached yourself from all things to which you were corded, but, your energy may still exist in those places. It’s time to call it back. All the places to which you have invested a lot of your energy, past, present or future (think: worrying), your energy may exist there, outside of your body. In calling your energy back, you will be operating at full energetic capacity, and it will restore you with a sense of rejuvenation and motivation. To call your energy back, quickly, simply imagine all of the people, places, things, or relationships in which you feel you’ve been giving a lot of your energy – and ask it to come back to you. Imagine this energy leaving that place, and flowing back to you, as a golden stream of light, coming to rest in your core, your physical center, as an ever growing ball of golden light. Start the process by focusing on a single place, and continue moving from one place, to the next, until you feel that you have asked your energy to return to you from all of its pursuits outside of your physical body. There’s no right or wrong amount of time here, it’s up to you, and following your own intuition. By the nature of our existence, always interacting with other beings, there is nearly ALWAYS some of your energy existing out of your body, but the extent to which this is the case, depends really, only on how frequently you ask your energy to return to you. Allow yourself to be open to the places from which your energy returns. It can return from somewhere you never believed it to be, or even from very past events and scenarios, those which may cause you sadness or pain. For learn more and for more detailed instructions on how to do this, check out this article on energy retrieval.

    5. Rejuvenate Your Aura.

    By this point, you have removed foreign energies, cut cords, and called your energy back. All of your energy is now yours, and yours alone, but now – you must fill the holes left behind by the cords, or by the removal of foreign energy. It is not enough to stop now – your energy is filled with holes and you must seal them off, and in doing so, you are healing your aura, your energy. You are protecting yourself from further cording, or attachment of foreign energy. Once the holes are filled, it’s time to strengthen, reinforce, and boost your energy, infusing your energy with that of the Divine. This sounds wonderful. . . but are you sure I can do this? Yes! Everyone has the power to draw upon Divine Energy to heal themselves. Everyone. All you need, is the knowledge and the wherewithal to do it, which is what I’m teaching you now. The first step, is to imagine the skies above you opening, and from those skies, pours down a pink, golden light. This is a healing light, and as the light falls upon you, imagine it filling each, and every hole, and watch as the holes become filled. Imagine this pink, golden light, gliding over the surface of your body, smoothing, buffing, and patching over the holes. As if you are using a golden glowing spackle to blend plaster into the wall of your home. You are now applying this same practice to your energetic field, except instead you are using a plaster of light. Continue to draw down this Divine Light, and imagine it filling, smoothing, and polishing your energetic field until you feel the job is finished. Next, still with your grounding cord connected to the Earth, draw upon that Earth Energy once again. Only now, imagine it filling your physical body from below the earth with bright, white light. Internally, imagine the energy of the Earth, filling, and internally boosting, your energy – and continue to draw upon Earth Energy, until you are internally glowing, bright, white light. You have now, rejuvenated and restored your energy, internally. The final step, is to draw upon Divine Light once again, only this time, the color changes to a bright, golden yellow. And instead of filling holes, you will now imagine the Divine Light swirling all around you, as if you are Cinderella being transformed by the Fairy Godmother. As the Light swirls, it condenses, and piles on top of itself, creating a bright, golden bubble, swirling around your physical body. Continue drawing upon this Light, until this bubble of golden yellow light fills the room in which you sit. You are now protected, and surrounded by Divine Light. This now completes the meditation portion of this exercise. Before you stop, be sure to thank the Earth, for restoring your energy and receiving and cleansing all energies, cords, and ties that you have returned to it; thank the Divine Light, for healing and restoring your auric field; and finally, thank your Guides, for assisting you with this process (because they were).

    6. Shift your Perception.

    Your Energy is healed! You are filled with Divine Light and Earth Energy, and inherently, you are now radiating pure love, positivity, and high energy. In this moment – you have the choice. The choice to maintain this current state, or the choice to return to your previous state, the state that you just healed from. The decision is yours to make in this moment. Yes, you had a bad morning, a bad day, a bad week. You can choose to continue to focus on these circumstances, or to shift your perceptions, to change your outlook. Let’s say, for example, the woman at Dunkin Donuts drive thru forgot to make your latte a non-fat latte. That’s it! She ruined your diet. 80 calories, you’re totally screwed. And now it’s all you can think about – your messed up latte order. Consider the alternative: She’s at work, and in fact, she made it to work this morning at 4am in a snowstorm while her children were still sleeping. She’s just doing her best, to support her family. Mistakes happen, and hey – what does 80 calories matter in the long run anyway? Instead of sending hate, choose to send love and compassion instead. What about that crockpot you forgot to turn on? You’re beating yourself up for it, you failed to provide dinner for your family, and not only that, but you also just wasted $10 and no one has dinner. Hey! Snap out of it – you can choose to let it go! Shift your perception – who cares that dinner wasn’t ready when you came home?! Make some macaroni and cheese, and consider it a blessing – your freezer meal wasn’t going to be as comforting anyway. Choose now, to release yourself from this burden and allow yourself to have a more pleasant evening. You deserve a break! After you’ve completed your energetic exercises, give yourself a small pep talk, filled with positive affirmations and positive thoughts for the rest of the day, week, or month. You choose to embrace and exude love, positivity, and happiness. You choose to be a beacon of light now. You choose, to be grateful and appreciative. You choose to release, let go, and shift your perspective to one rooted in love, happiness, and gratitude. You are now an energy healer, a healer of yourself! With these tools, you can lift yourself up and power on, through your funk, and complete your day with a new, rejuvenated, and loving outlook.

    from:    http://howtoexitthematrix.com/2016/06/27/how-to-get-out-of-a-funk-in-6-easy-steps/

    The Malady of Normalcy

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    Being Crazy in a Sick Society is Actually Healthy

    BY SOFO ARCHON

    be different

    To be normal is to be sick

    Krishnamurti once said that “it is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society.” However, being born and brought up in such a society, most people can’t realize that it is sick, let alone that they are part of this sickness, just like fish, which, living in water, cannot realize that they are in water and part of the sea life.

    What does it mean to live a normal life? In the modern world, especially in the West, it means to be brainwashed at a very young age for over a decade by what we call schooling, to later on work as a wage slave for almost the rest of your life competing with others so as to merely survive, to mindlessly consume products without end because manipulative advertising convinced you to do so, while at the same time you unconsciously harm the planet we inhabit, to slowly poison your physical organism by feeding it with disease causing foods, to obey to the rules and believe in the dogmas handed down to you by those in authority, to be passive and uncreative, suppressing yourself in countless of ways, living in suffering yet doing nothing to overcome it.

    If you stop for a moment and think, you might realize that this kind of living is absolutely sick, yet it is accepted by almost everyone as healthy and is actually rewarded by society. In fact, those of us who are better at living this way are considered to be the most successful and respected, while those who are different, more sensitive and intelligent, desiring to create a different path in life, are ridiculed and looked down upon, being considered as stupid, weird, or even crazy.

    But what is the point of living the way most people live? Life can be lived so much better — we can live playfully, filled with laughter and love, with a desire to be creative, at peace with ourselves and others, savoring the gifts of existence. Unfortunately, only a few people manage to think outside the mental box that society has provided us with and escape from the matrix they’ve been unconsciously living in since they were born. Those are the rebellious ones who at some point in their lives felt the need to break free from the chains of tradition and help create a more beautiful world for all beings on earth.

    Rebelling against normalcy

    To rebel against normalcy is the most difficult thing you can do because you need the guts to be honest with yourself and others. To voice the truth in a world where almost everyone is living in lies is quite a risky thing to do. Speaking the truth means going against the current of tradition, which in turn means confronting the herd mentality and having the strength to keep on going your way regardless the hardships you might face.

    There have been many people who had the courage to rebel against the normalcy of our sick society, but most of them couldn’t deal with the negative consequences their actions had on themselves. When nobody embraces your uniqueness and is able to understand you, and when everybody is trying to suppress you and help you fit back into society, it is easy to lose courage, and not uncommon to experience immense psychological anguish. That’s why some of the greatest minds to have ever walked on earth were suffering from serious mental and emotional issues. And although now, after a long time since they passed away, they are recognized as geniuses, when they were alive they were seen by the majority as weirdos or lunatics.

    Once you realize how sick the way you and most people are living is and openly go against it, trying to reclaim your freedom and create your own path in life, you are bound to get in trouble. People, including family members and friends will do everything to put obstacles on your path with the intention to “help” you become normal again, exactly like they are. Instead of helping you to grow your wings of consciousness and leave behind what is burdening your psyche, they do their best to cut them off and make you crawl by their side so that you can suffer together.

    Dare to be crazy

    Your inner voice has for a very long time been telling you that life could be lived much more beautifully, and you should trust it because it’s right. And although it might be the most difficult thing to achieve, it is the only thing worth working for, because what is the point of living otherwise? What is the point of wasting your entire life just because others told you that’s how you are supposed to live?

    If you desire to live the way you want to live and not the way others expect you to live, you need to gather the courage in your heart to be a little crazy — crazy according to society’s standards. You need to distance yourself from the comfort of the herd and follow your calling, without caring what others think of you. You need to be willing to go through hardships and experience pain, without giving up trying to turn your dreams into reality.

    Remember: no matter how much pain you might experience by walking the path of non-conformity, the rewards of doing so far outweigh the disadvantages. Just like a mother experiences tremendous pain while giving birth, you are experiencing immense pain birthing a new kind of life. A life of beauty, of joy, of celebration. Pain goes hand in hand with change, so embrace it, allow it to guide to you and let it be a catalyst for your inner metamorphosis.

    from:    http://theunboundedspirit.com/crazy/

     

    Lucid Dreaming & Consciousness

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    Lucid Dreaming as a Gateway to Spiritual Awakening

    Lucid Dreaming Gate to Spiritual Awakening

    24th June 2016

    By Frank M. Wanderer, Ph.D.

    Guest writer for Wake Up World

    Allow me to draw your attention to an apparently surprising thing. If I told you that now, when you are reading these lines, you are in fact asleep, you would certainly believe that I have gone mad.

    You are awake, you are concentrating your attention to reading, and you are aware of your environment as well. You can see the furniture of your room, you can hear the call of the birds from the nearby forest. You are also aware of your thoughts and emotions. How can anyone claim that you are asleep at this very moment?

    Naturally, you – just like everyone else – sleeps at night. Yes, sometimes you see dreams while you sleep, but right now it is daytime, you are awake. So how could you see dreams?

    You Imagine a Whole World Around Yourself

    I believe that you do not only sleep at night, but also during the daytime. I believe that in your present state of consciousness, your greatest illusion is that you think you are awake. I believe that in your present existence, your greatest illusion is when you think that you are alert. What I see is that in your present state of consciousness you are asleep, and at present you are dreaming, and what you see and hear are all parts of your dream.

    Your nighttime sleep is only different from your daytime sleep in that in the night your dreams are less active. During the day, you imagine a whole world around you, and you play an active role in that dream. Your personal history takes place in that world, and identifying with that world shapes your personal identity.

    At present, you are dreaming that as a part of your personal history you are reading these lines while identifying with the role of the spiritual seeker, and you are outraged by what you are actually reading.

    The question may arise, ‘Why do I claim that you are asleep and dreaming now?’. Well, from the state of consciousness I call Alertness, I can see that mostly, you are asleep, you believe yourself to be a separate self, you are a captive of the works of your mind.

    You Are Not Present

    What is the evidence for me to say that you are now asleep and, as a citizen of a dreamland, you are dreaming that you are awake?

    It is because you are not present. To be present means that you are fully alert, attentive, and conscious in the present moment. Whatever you do, you do that fully consciously, you focus your entire attention on that particular activity.

    Do you feel free to declare that you are present in every moment of your life?

    What does it mean to be awake? It has happened to all of us that we have come under the spell of a moment, at some time during our life. A beautiful landscape, a sunset, a beautiful piece of art, the rhythm of music enchanted us. It may even happen that we are just lost in the silence of a peaceful moment. The identification with the forms and shapes loosens a little bit for a short while, and in that instant, we may experience an entirely different state of Consciousness.

    You Live in a Separate World

    How deep you sleep may depend on how realistic you find your dreams, how much you identify with your identity embedded in your personal history. The less alert you are, and the deeper you submerge into your dreams, the more isolated, solitary and individualistic you will become.

    Liberation Through Lucid Living - Consciousness Within the DreamEvery sleeper –including you– has a separate world, only those who exist in the state of Conscious Alertness (the true Lucid Dreaming) have a common, shared reality. All those different and separate worlds are created by the mind, which generates the state of separateness: the Ego, which appears as the focus of our identification with our thoughts and emotions. Thus everybody has a separate identity, personal history, individual world view and methods of action.

    Sometimes suffering alarms you from your sleep, but then you hasten to return to it, and start a new dream, a new objective in life, new ideals, passion, ambition that confirms your connection with your identity, rooted in your personal history.

    The Reasons of Your Sleep

    The reason of you sleeping is that you are not alert, only awake. Only one dimension of Alertness is present in you. Although you are able to focus your attention on your internal emotions and your environment, in your present state of Consciousness you are still powerfully identified with your mind and its functions.

    You are therefore drifting on the stormy ocean of your thoughts and emotions day by day, and the space necessary for the emergence of a contemplating Witness is missing from you. You still identify with your thoughts and emotions. These generate the dreams of the Mind, in which you live as a separate self, and try to find the ways of safely navigating your life on the stormy sea.

    Longing for Freedom

    In this separate state of Consciousness, the lack of Alertness may appear as a desire for freedom. This desire emerges from your real self, as your mind remembers its origins. This atavistic memory of the ancient past is the quiet attraction that will eventually take you back to Silence.

    This deep desire will only cease if you become alert again, that is, you will not be awake but also alert. Then the Consciousness awakens to its own existence in the human form you at present call yourself.

    Only giving up the struggle with the thoughts and emotions and the recognition of the futility of insisting on them will bring you the real freedom, The freedom of independence of the functions of the mind.

    Alertness, the awakened Consciousness, the world of internal silence are all beyond the functions of the mind. If you wish to reach beyond the identification with your thoughts and emotions, if you recognize the functions of the mind and the intensity of your identification with them loosens, you may become alert again, in the quiet, pure space of Consciousness.

    In this way, the third dimension of Alertness, that is, the contemplating Consciousness, appears in your life. This the original state of our existence, the pure Consciousness, the state of the witnessing Presence.

    This article was excerpted from the new book by Frank M. Wanderer, Ego – Alertness – Consciousness: The Path to Your Spiritual Home.

    from:    http://wakeup-world.com/2016/06/24/lucid-dreaming-as-a-gate-to-spiritual-awakening/

    Time to Exercise the Imagination

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    Visualization: Are You Using Your Imagination Wisely?

    By Christina Lavers
    Contributing writer for Wake Up World

    Imagination is our inner vision. It is the magical bridge between the everyday and the ethereal realm, the gateway between the finite and the infinite. Children naturally have vivid imaginations and use this innate faculty to explore and animate life. With the advent of science and rationality, a clear distinction between the fanciful and the concrete came to define our understanding of reality. The magical enchantment of the world largely receded into the cracks and humans were left to operate within the confines of the ordinary, the quantifiable, and the normal. We came to see imagination as something of little value, to be left behind in childhood.

    Today we are rediscovering the importance of imagination. Quantum physics has transformed our understanding of the landscape of reality and our role in it. Quantum theory has forced the scientific community to question the assumption that consciousness cannot affect external reality. Increasingly, evidence demonstrates that due to the intimate way we are energetically entangled with all that exists, our thoughts do have the ability to affect our physical world. As a result more people are opening to the possibility that we can indeed use the power of our minds to influence what unfolds in our external reality.

    An important way that we can use imagination to improve our quality of life is through visualization. Visualization is a cognitive tool using our imagination as a vehicle to explore an idea, action, or outcome. As a practice visualization can be used to rehearse, investigate, or induce a particular state of mind. For example we could imagine ourselves engaged in our dream job, picture ourselves in a highly relaxing scenario, or watch ourselves conquering a fear. The more we repeat the process and the richer we make the experience, the more entrenched the positive scenario becomes in our subconscious and thus the more likely it will be to manifest in reality. Of course there are many factors that influence us at unconscious levels. So, while visualization cannot guarantee any particular outcome, it is still seen as effective enough that today many professionals and athletes use this technique to help prepare them for events and challenging circumstances.

    One of the reasons that visualization is such a powerful tool is that the subconscious and physical brain are not able to distinguish between what we experience in our external reality and what we see in our mind’s eye. It has been established that mental images (imagining/visualizing) activate the same parts of the brain as actual sensory input – this means that these parts of the brain can’t differentiate between real and imagined input. The brain will respond by releasing the same chemicals into the body regardless of whether the stimulus is real or imagined.

    Here is an amazing example of what that can mean for us: Guang Yue, an exercise psychologist from Cleveland Clinic Foundation in Ohio, compared a group of volunteers who performed physical workouts with another group who only imagined doing virtual exercise in their heads. He found that a 30% muscle increase in the group who engaged in physical movement. However, the group of participants who only imagined doing the weight training exercises increased muscle strength by almost half as much (13.5%).

    In another similar study, Brian Clark from Ohio University recruited 29 volunteers and wrapped their wrists in surgical casts for an entire month. Throughout this period, fifty percent of the volunteers thought about exercising their immobilized wrists. For 11 minutes a day, 5 days a week, they focused on seeing themselves flexing their muscles. When the casts were removed, the group that imagined doing exercises were found to have wrist muscles that were twice as strong than the group that had done nothing.

    Another story that illustrates the power of mental visualization is described by Wenger in his book, “The Einstein Factor”. Wegner describes an American soldier who was a prisoner of war in Vietnam. For more than seven years this man was confined alone in a tiny cell with barely enough room to stretch his limbs. In order to maintain his sanity he played a detailed game of eighteen hole golf in his mind every single day. When he was finally released and allowed to return to the United States he found that without having stepped foot on an actual course for so many years, he managed to cut 20 strokes off his game (which is apparently pretty amazing!) just through using his imagination to visualize himself playing golf.

    One of the reasons that visualization is such a powerful tool is that it allows us to engage and interact with our unconscious. While science is able to document some of what we are capable of at the deeper levels, there is still an enormous amount of mystery around what the unconscious actually is. It is not something that can be dissected and examined with a microscope. We may have mapped so much of our physical world, but our internal one is still largely uncharted territory. Many believe that the unconscious is in fact the wellspring of our personal reality and this is why visualization, which uses imagery and feeling to communicate with the unconscious, is so effective

    However, when we understand that visualization is a tool that can help us shape our reality, it becomes clear that it is important to use it wisely. Unfortunately, for a majority of adults’ imaginative skills are most often used unconsciously, in conjunction with worry.

    While it is important to allow feelings to be expressed, and a little worrying is part of a balanced approach to life because it can act as a trigger to propel us into action, all too often it is given so much energy that it becomes a destructive force in our life. If we see visualization as a tool to magnify our desires and communicate with our unconscious, we can see why it is so important to avoid coupling it with worry. Instead of floating down the stream of our imagination on the boat of trouble and trepidation, we would be better off using it consciously and constructively to reinforce a desirable outcome.

    One of the most important conditions for successful visualization is to cultivate a relaxed state of mind. When our brains are operating at the soothing alpha level we are less likely to feel stress or engage in negative thinking. When we combine the relaxed alpha state, which encourages our brains to produce ‘happy’ chemicals (endorphins, serotonin etc), with vivid imagery and feeling, we create a powerful tool for making our dreams become reality.

    Tips to Help You Visualize

    Focus on the feelings (e.g. how do you feel being successful at a particular venture), as this is where the key communication is taking place. The more we can cultivate real feeling the more powerful the exercise will be.

    Include as much sensory information and details as possible. Use smells, textures, colours, emotions to enrich and deepen the experience.

    Repetition is helpful as the unconscious responds to the messages it receives consistently. (Which is why habitual negative self-talk can have such damaging consequences on what we create in our reality). However, make sure not to just go through the motions in your mind… remember that rich feeling is key.

    Alpha states, which create ideal conditions for visualization can be encouraged through relaxing activities such as listening to soothing music (binaural beats are particularly effective), walking in nature, meditating, and dancing.

    from:     http://www.zengardner.com/visualization-using-imagination-wisely/

    Where Does Memory Lie?

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    PROOF OF MEMORY IN THE DNA

    MIT DNA BreakA new study reported in the prestigious journal Cell (June 18, 2015) has found evidence that neurons break their own DNA to enable us to learn and to form memories. Up till know it has widely been assumed that a breakage in the DNA means damage and if the breakage remains then the DNA’s own repair systems are defective.

    These researchers have found that “damage” is necessary to allow the expression of the so-called “early response” which are actually responsible for the regulation of processes crucial for the formation of long-lasting memories. The astounding conclusion to be drawn from this research is not only that this break in the DNA of neurons is not “damage” in the normal sense of the word, but also it is the routine process that results in the storage of the memory. The fact that the DNA is altered in this way clearly indicates that the memories are actually stored in the DNA and not in the neural network as has always been assumed.

    These lesions or breaks in the DNA are immediately repaired, and what’s more it has been found that these repair systems become less effective in aging subjects which again clearly affirms that it is actually the DNA and not the neurons which are responsible for the storage of memory and thus accounts for the common loss of memory capability later in life. Earlier studies have actually foreshadowed this research when they found that the DNA of mice with Alzheimer’s disease had a significantly large occurrence of these unrepaired breaks or lesions. These earlier studies conducted by Li-Huei Tsai at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) found the unrepaired lesions occurred specifically in the hippocampus of these mice which is known precisely to be a region of the brain responsible for learning and memory.

    To further test this link between the breakage of the DNA and memory storage the researchers actually isolated neurons in a petri dish and exposed them to an agent that caused these double strand breaks in the DNA. When they examined the DNA in these isolated neurons they found that while the expression of the genes in general had been reduced, astoundingly expression had increased in these early-response genes responsible for memory storage, which would indicate that the DNA had committed this experiment to memory in these dead and lifeless neurons.

    The early response genes are known to be rapidly expressed after neuronal activity and the researchers set out to ascertain whether the breaks in the DNA where a part of this process. When an organism is exposed to a new experience information flows across the gaps in the neural network known as the synapse. The scientists exposed the neurons to a substance which mimics the flow of this information after a new experience. “Sure enough, we found that the treatment very rapidly increased the expression of those early response genes, but it also caused DNA double strand breaks,” Tsai said in a statement. That is to say a false memory had been stored in the DNA of the organism.

    The researchers used computers that scrutinized the DNA sequences adjacent to these breaks. When the DNA is intact there are minute kinks in the DNA caused by the binding of an architectural protein. These kinks prevent crucial signaling with distant DNA regions, and thus inhibits the expression of the early response genes. The breaks in the DNA remove this barrier to gene expression thus enabling the memory to be stored.

    It has been known all along that aging results in a decline in the expression of the genes involved in learning processes as well as the storage of memories, and it would now appear that the problem is actually caused by the DNA repair processes becoming defective with age which means that these breaks in the DNA tend to accumulate thus hindering the retrieval of the information.

    In another article on this website Memory Storage in the DNA you can learn how the expression of genes can be controlled by our brain waves, thus indicating that ultimately the occurrence of these breakages in the DNA must come from the mental image of the memory to be stored. These scientists have found a breakage in the chemical structure of the DNA but it must be obvious to all that the breakage cannot of itself explain the storage of a memory. Rather the breakage withdraws the barrier that enables the early response genes to pick up a certain precise frequency of brain wave which obviously would be capable of transmitting a precise mental image. A certain precise frequency of brain waves would most certainly be generated by the specific firing of a precise cluster of neurons, thus explaining all stages of the process from the formulation of a mental image to its ultimate storage as data in the DNA.

    from:    http://www.spiritualgenome.com/index.php/articles/54-proof-of-memory-in-the-d

    Opening Up & Going Within

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    Can You Hear the Whispers of Love?

    By Christina Lavers
    Contributing writer for Wake Up World

    “Your vision will become clear only when you can look into your own heart. Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakes.” ~ Carl Jung

    Have you noticed something mysterious, electrifying, but slightly daunting stirring within? Something that just doesn’t quite fit with the way we have been taught to see the world? If you have you are not alone. After eons of near silence our hearts are calling out, and it is becoming increasingly difficult to ignore their whispering truths.

    Those of us who have chosen to pull our attention away from the seduction of the external theatrics, to respond to the gentle urgings emanating from our core, find ourselves opening up to profound transformation. Suddenly jobs, friends, entertainment, and for some, whole lifestyles that used to seem like a good fit, now feel uncomfortable and unsatisfying; so many of the ‘things’ in our surrounds that we once deemed essential to bolster our sense of identify no longer feel meaningful; and concepts like integrity, compassion, authenticity, and love that were once just distant ideals abruptly take centre stage and demand to be acknowledged.

    To illustrate the situation I will use a simple analogy. Imagine if we had grown up listening to a radio that didn’t work properly. Every station had some form of distorted noise coming through that we had come to regard as normal music. We had our favourite distorted tunes that, though they didn’t really sound amazing, had a certain familiarity and appeal. Then one day everything changes. As we flick through the many channels we hear extremely faint, yet discernibly pure music seeping out. We can make out a melody, a harmony, and a beat that not only sounds, but feels, sublime. As we get better at attuning to that particular frequency we begin to hear the music with increasing clarity. The more we listen, the less appealing the old distorted channels we grew up listening to feel, until we eventually find ourselves satisfied by nothing less than the depth and radiance that is embodied in that new frequency bandwidth.

    Some of us have been following this mysterious call for a long time. Drawn towards long forgotten and undiscovered terrain we have abandoned the shallow, busy, fast-paced mainstream highway and worked to carve out a unique path that we know is ultimately leading back to alignment with our hearts. For others of us this calling is new, and though compelling, is also somewhat perplexing in the way it contrasts with everything we have accepted to be true. The good news is that numbers are growing exponentially – there are many of us who are succeeding in pulling our attention away from all the external distraction long enough to allow the faint whispers to come alive within us, to expand through our being, and to spread outward, subtly affecting everything we touch. And as the numbers swell and more people choose to move against the grain of mass consensus, the momentum gradually increases, and the journey becomes a little smoother, a little less treacherous, and a lot more evident.

    “One love, one heart, one destiny.” ~ Bob Marley

    One of the beautiful aspects of this process is that though each person’s journey is completely unique and perfectly aligned to our individual needs, because we are each connecting to the frequency of heart source, a space where we all meet as one, there is a sense of cohesion, of coherency, and interconnection to all that unfolds from that divine point.

    However, as the impetus increases, the misaligned distortion of the old reality we are moving away from will continue to threaten, thrash and buck. Trying to command our attention and scare us, or seduce us back into its sway, it will attempt to escalate the intensity of its spectacle. However, the more we learn not to buy into the old drama, not to feed it with the energy of our focus, the less power it will ultimately have, and the more swiftly it will fade into oblivion.

    The real challenge is just to be true. We are so used to hiding our flaws, our vulnerabilities, and even our light, but the path of the heart requires emotional bravery. It requires us to step out of the comfort of normality, to stand in our truth and to honour all that we are. As we make this shift inside we need to be prepared to learn to accept our perceived weaknesses and vulnerabilities, and to experience awkward and uncomfortable situations. This is just part of the process. As we get used to operating from the loving space of our deeper self, the more we will be able to move through the world with ease and grace. And the more we align with this change, the safer we will feel to expand out to far reaches of our beings and re-member all that we truly are.

    Personally, as this shift occurs within I have felt myself drawn to a more natural, simple, creative lifestyle. As I release social programming the need for external validation lessens and I find myself discovering what really makes my heart sing. I am learning to weave love into every aspect of my life, through the light and the shadows, and the more I am able to do this, the more I feel myself participating in a profound magical dance that is at once an expression of my unique soul, and a reconnection to a beautiful collective harmony. As more and more of us choose to realign with our hearts and discover our true natures, I believe we will see that we are capable of creating a new world that instead of being driven by fear, greed, exploitation and competition, is based on love, acceptance, compassion and cooperation.

    “Let us dream of tomorrow where we can truly love from the soul, and know love as the ultimate truth at the heart of all creation.” ~ Michael Jackson

    from:    http://www.zengardner.com/can-hear-whispers-love/