Tag Archives: Spirituality

Spirituality – Choices of Love or Fear

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I posted this on the Astral Pulse just now and I wanted to share it here too.

I always try to remind myself that two choices exist (probably many more, but you’ll figure them out on your own)… Fear or Love.

The Fear choice takes you back down the mountain… it’s giving in to all the negativity surrounding everything in this world.
The Love choice takes you up further up the mountain to the next teetering precipice (yes, there are many of them up the mountain LoL)… it’s simply allowing the world to be as it is.

There’s a lot of fear in the world today, we saw it boil over a couple weeks ago in Boston. The fear will always be there.

It’s all meaningless anyway… although, that

‘s not to say that it’s not important. The smallest act such as stepping on an ant is very important to the world, as the world has lost something… however small that loss is, it’s now gone forever. Through focusing on Love, we can help retain the best that the world has and allow it to continue to grow, while we also create a world that is less fertile for Fear grow. I try not to worry about that which I have very little, or no control over. I have very little to no control over the actions of others who have given in to Fear…

Choose Love over Fear… never give in to the negativity in the world.

Giving into Fear is allowing your ship to fill with water and sink.

\"Spirituality

Is Astral Projection a Spiritual Practice?

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The simple answer to this question is no, Astral Projection is not a spiritual practice in itself. I have no doubt that some people will be surprised to hear that and others will be nodding in agreement. Please allow me to explain.

This is, in fact, the wrong question. The question should be, \”CAN Astral Projection be a spiritual practice?\”. The answer to that is a resounding YES. Of course it can be, but you need to make the conscious choice to make it so.

It starts with asking yourself why do you want to learn Astral Projection, or if the case is that you already know how, then simply ask why do you Project? It begins with the Intent behind the \”why\”. If all you\’re looking for is the thrill of something new, or perhaps you want to just fly around, or maybe you\’re wanting to spy on people… well, the Intent associated with these actions isn\’t of Love. Some of it is self-serving. Some of it is just outright negative. I\’m not saying don\’t spy, don\’t fly and don\’t find a thrill… I\’m just saying that if you\’re looking to grow spiritually, then those things should probably be kept in balance with your other activities. I\’m a big fan of flying… and a lot of the time I get caught up in doing just that. So I understand that sometimes it\’s not easy to keep your mind on track.

Now remember that you can grow spiritually much faster simply by interacting with others in this physical reality. Don\’t hide from other people, they\’re your path to spiritual growth! That is the entire reason why you chose to be here in the first place! To fast track yourself towards becoming a being of Love. If you can stick to that path in the current social atmosphere of greed that surrounds us on a daily basis, then I think you\’re doing pretty good. The nice thing about becoming Love here physically is that it translates over into your Projections. You will find that your Projections take on a much more positive atmosphere to them and you will meet with more positive entities, because you\’ve now shifted your Intent towards a more positive position, hence you will begin to experience such directly. This concept also applies to our physical lives. The more you change within to become closer to Love, the more positive effects you\’ll see happen in your life.

You can definitely also learn to become a more Loving being through Astral Projection. This is where Astral Projection as a spiritual tool comes into play. Just as you grow spiritually here in the physical, through your interactions with other Consciousnesses, the same holds true while you\’re projecting as well. Be kind to all those you meet, because you never know if an entity you\’re interacting with is a creation of your consciousness or a truly separate being from you. So just be nice to everyone.

That lesson also holds true here in this physical reality, except you know that everyone is separate (well, that\’s the illusion anyway) from you. You don\’t know the life stories of other people you meet here physically, so treat everyone with respect. This is the first lesson, in my opinion, of becoming Love. Respecting everyone. It has just as many implications physically as it does during our Projections.

So, as you can see, Astral Projection is only a Spiritual Practice if you choose to make it such. Likewise, even your physical life requires a choice to be made as to whether it\’s a spiritual life or not.

Spirituality – Why I Can’t Get Mad At People

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A few years back, I was driving home from somewhere when, all of a sudden, I got cut off while passing through an intersection. I was just about ready to let loose with a few curse words and just generally boiling mad, when I realized something. I’ve done this same thing to other people by accident… I have no idea what the other person was thinking or doing when they cut me off. At that point, I realized that I simply can’t get mad at someone for doing something that I, too, have done in the past. How can I? Wouldn’t that be hypocritical of me?

This is why I (mostly lol) don’t get mad or angry at people anymore for doing something that I would have once called them “stupid” or “an idiot” for, because at one point or another I was probably doing the exact same thing.

So what do I do instead? I take the advice of a wonderful Spiritual Teacher named Adyashanti. If you’ve read my posts lately, you’ve definitely heard or seen him.
The advice is to simply allow everything to be as it is. In this instance, it means to simply accept that what’s done is done. Regardless of the intent of the individual who cuts you off, it’s done, just accept it and move on. No amount of you getting angry is going to change what happened, nor is you getting angry going to make the other driver not do it again.

Eventually, you’ll actually be able to observe the biological processes happening AS they happen. I had an instance, and Adya recalls something similar in one of his videos, where I had something like this happen to me again, except someone almost drove into my car, and as it was happening I was able to observe what was occurring in my body. The biological events that were occurring within me, but since I wasn’t reacting to them, they kind of surged for a minute, then dissipated slowly.

It’s all about recognizing patterns in your life and then allowing them to be as they are. You can apply this to ANYTHING. Everything from the people around you to the simple daily activities we do. Whenever you pin point something as a trigger for you to get angry, ask yourself why you’re getting angry, then try to just accept it. This allows you to let go of the anger.

Something else I realized is that being a Spiritual person doesn’t mean you don’t get angry, frustrated, upset, etc…
It means you don’t hold onto the anger, the frustration, etc… you’re able to experience it, then immediately let it go. Quite often I’ll get frustrated at something where I’ll seemingly get really upset, then the next second I’m happy as ever again. It’s not that I’m bi-polar, although sometimes it could really seem that way (LoL), but it’s because I’m able to let go of things that upset me.

Anyway, back to the point of this article… if something someone does gets you angry, try to look back into your past actions and see if you’ve done the same thing before. You can hardly get angry at someone for doing something that you, yourself have done at some point. Instead of allowing your emotions to control you in this situation, why not tell the individual about what happened to you when YOU made the same mistake. That way, two people can learn from one persons mistake! Isn’t that a much better use of your energy instead of getting mad and calling someone stupid?

This kind of action moves you closer to becoming Love, which is, in my opinion, the goal of experiencing this physical reality in the first place. You’ll also find that as you become closer to Love, that things like Meditation and Astral Projection come, not only easier, but happen more often and spontaneously as well!

Learning Astral Projection & Meditation – Emptying Your Cup

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I think everyone, at one point or another throughout their lives, has hear this phrase before – \”Empty your cup\”.
It\’s not directly spiritual or religiously related, although it can be related to just about every aspect of your life.

This is something that I have personally experienced, and I whole-fully believe that everyone has to do in order to progress on their path. That path can be learning Projection, Meditation, Spirituality in general… anything.

\"EmptyFor myself, it was relating directly to the first two… Projection and Meditation. Over the 15+ years I\’ve been practicing meditation, I read and learned much about what others were telling me that meditation was about, the same was true about projection. Everyone was filling my head with what I should be experiencing and feeling when doing these things. What did I actually learn? I learned that all the stuff I was learning that I THOUGHT was the truth, actually wasn\’t. What it was doing was getting in the way of what *I* was experiencing. I was throwing away valid and valuable experiences because they didn\’t match up to what others were telling me. This is a huge mistake…

So I came to a conclusion that in order for me to actually progress, I had to forget everything I thought I knew about Projection and Meditation. My cup had become so full with the notions, ideas and concepts of other people, that I had no room for my own notions, ideas and concepts to grow and flourish. I don\’t know exactly when this action happened, but it did… and ever since that day, I have found my own path through the forest instead of relying upon the footsteps of those who have come before me. I\’m now self sufficient in my opinions and beliefs, because they\’re no longer beliefs to me… they\’re now based solely upon my own direct experiences, and as we know, \”direct experiences\” are the trump cards with knowledge.

So please, if you\’re looking to learn anything new, be it anything about this physical reality or non-physical reality, you\’ll be doing yourself a huge favour by forgetting everything you think you know and begin to explore with the wonderment of a child. Everything is new.

Forget the labels you\’ve learned… dreaming, lucid dreaming, astral projection, out of body experiences, etc… forget it all. They are the labels of others… they only serve to confuse. Just go out and experience and learn from those experiences. 🙂

EDIT: It\’s been pointed out to me that people are taking this too literal. What I suggest above shouldn\’t be taken as such, it isn\’t literal.
Nothing in relation to projection should ever be taken literally. I\’m speaking about everything you\’ve been told about what projection is supposed to be or is.

Your ideas.
Your concepts.
Your labels.
What you identify with Projection.

Ditch them as they\’re useless to you.
Start from a position of \”not knowing\”.

Meditation – Myth of the Experienced Meditator

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Bob Hiller posted this on Facebook, and I wanted to share it with everyone here too!

If you\’ve been meditating for a long time, you might recognize some of the things this fine gentleman has to say. I know I sure did. LoL

The Myth of the Experienced Meditator

I AM, UNFORTUNATELY, an experienced meditator. From the time I stumbled into an introduction to Transcendental Meditation in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, in 1970, through multiple eras (including my present fifteen-year-old Soto Zen practice), I\’ve sat and stared at many walls (and mandalas and candles, and the inside of my eyelids) reveled in sundry bells-and-whistles mental experiences, gotten bored, decided I was going crazy, become enlightened (no, really!), and now I\’m ready to share everything I\’ve learned. It won\’t take long. In fact I can sum it up in one word: nothing.

Not that \”nothing\” is to be sniffed at. For years—decades!—I thought there was something to learn, and that all those thousands of hours on the mat were cumulative, that the more I sat, the more aware and compassionate and wonderful I would become. In a world where the attainment of goals is seen as a virtue, thirty-eight years of realizing nothing didn\’t come easily or lightly.

By definition (mine), if I did think I knew something about meditation, that wouldn\’t be meditation. Sort of like God—if you can describe God to me, that ain\’t God. If, as I believe, meditation is simply awareness, then any past knowledge I have about it is not only useless, but slops over into my immediate experience. Knowing is antithetical to openness, and it\’s the adventure of not knowing that\’s the genius of meditation. Not for nothing (so to speak) are two of the most popular contemporary books on Buddhism called Beginner\’s Mind (Shunryu Suzuki) and Only Don\’t Know (Seung Sahn). I have this fantasy that next time I open my copies of these books, I\’ll find only blank pages.

So what is meditation about? I\’ve heard many claims for the practice over the years, that it\’s about: gratitude; emptiness; deepened, (or if you prefer) heightened, awareness; compassion; spaciousness; the discovery/realization/dissolving of one\’s true self (your choice); attaining liberation; self-realization; being present in the moment; opening to the wonder of it all; finding inner peace; encountering one\’s Buddha nature; becoming one with everything; cutting through delusion; fill in the blank.

It seems to me, though, that meditation isn\’t about anything: meditation is meditation. Any attempt to define it in terms of something else simply confuses the issue, making it vulnerable to being treated like any other self-improvement system. Lord knows, these days we are offered enough ways to be better people, get closer to God, find ourselves, and enhance our circumstances. We\’re swamped with therapies, self-help books, and techniques—what musician and activist Bob Geldof called \”the thriving economy of psychotherapists, designer religions, and spiritual boutiques\”—which treat our lives as projects to be tweaked and fixed. Isn\’t meditation (if it\’s anything at all) a relief from all this? Isn\’t it the opposite of repairing and adjusting and striving and perpetually wanting things to be different?

For me, meditation is a haven away from the ubiquitous world of self-improvement. It\’s not just that there\’s no such thing as \”bad\” meditation, but there\’s no such thing as \”good\” meditation either. It is what it is. So when I hear words like \”effort\” and \”discipline\” and phrases like \”deepening one\’s practice\” and \”advancing along the spiritual path\” spoken in the same breath as the word \”meditation,\” I wince. Just sitting (shikantaza)—doing and wanting nothing, breath coming and going unbidden, eyes seeing, ears hearing—in this effortless state, thoughts flurry like falling leaves.

So can a so-called experienced meditator offer anything to someone new to the practice? Probably not. If what we\’re really talking about is awareness, how can we help someone notice what\’s going on? This is what\’s going on: no more, no less. Unlike a subject like, say, carpentry, where we learn from the experience of those who have gone before us, meditation is defined by spontaneity, by not knowing. As the Roshi says, \”practice only one level.\” Perhaps the best we can do is to reassure newcomers that each of us starts over with every sitting and every breath.

Trust me. I\’m an experienced meditator.

Morgan Freeman\’s Statement

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Morgan Freeman\’s statement about these random shootings….

\”You want to know why. This may sound cynical, but here\’s why.

It\’s because of the way the media reports it. Flip on the news and watch how we treat the Batman theater shooter and the Oregon mall shooter like celebrities. Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris are household names, but do you know the name of a single victim of Columbine? Disturbed people who would otherwise just off themselves in their basements see the news and want to top it by doing something worse, and going out in a memorable way. Why a grade school? Why children? Because he\’ll be remembered as a horrible monster, instead of a sad nobody.

CNN\’s article says that if the body count \”holds up\”, this will rank as the second deadliest shooting behind Virginia Tech, as if statistics somehow make one shooting worse than another. Then they post a video interview of third-graders for all the details of what they saw and heard while the shootings were happening. Fox News has plastered the killer\’s face on all their reports for hours. Any articles or news stories yet that focus on the victims and ignore the killer\’s identity? None that I\’ve seen yet. Because they don\’t sell. So congratulations, sensationalist media, you\’ve just lit the fire for someone to top this and knock off a day care center or a maternity ward next.

You can help by forgetting you ever read this man\’s name, and remembering the name of at least one victim. You can help by donating to mental health research instead of pointing to gun control as the problem.\”

I wanted to comment on this…
This event and all of the preceding mass killings in our society are PRIME EXAMPLES that we create the very world we live in.
Morgan Freeman is quite correct. The demands of our society have created a media which begs for these kinds of actions to take place. Why? Because, we, as a society, ignore everything until we\’re shocked into paying attention and the media outlets know this. We have created the very world we asked for.

The need to rise above the mess we\’re created for ourselves has never been greater. It\’s unfortunate that you can\’t change the world directly, but you can change yourself, and that\’s where the change has to occur. \”Be the change you wish to see in the world\”. That single statement holds so much truth… it\’s a simple truth, yet completely overwhelming as well. All it takes is \”action\” upon yourself to initiate it.

The first thing you can do is what Mr Freeman suggests above… ignore everything about the shooter and mourn the victims. They\’re the ones who won\’t be able to live and grow in this world, learning the lessons they should have learned. Make sure the cowardly shooter remains a sad, lonely nobody. Give your love to those who need it right now.

My Life… My Lesson…

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Ever since I was a young teenager, I could never shake this notion that for some reason I probably wasn\’t going to make it out of my 30\’s. I didn\’t know where this information came from or why it was coming to me. Now, after 20 years of having this idea floating around in my mind, I finally realize where it was coming from and what means.

First I thought it was about dying. For one reason or another I thought I wouldn\’t make it through my 30\’s to see my 40\’s. However, now that I look back on everything I\’ve experienced over the last couple years… I look back on the transformations that have occurred in my life, I realize exactly what this \”feeling\” was all about. It wasn\’t about me dying… nothing could have been further from the truth. Just like the \”Death\” card in a Tarot deck symbolizes \”change\”, so too did this lifelong feeling I had. It was a note to myself that my 30\’s was when I\’d be changing, when I\’d be transforming. Forever changing how I not only viewed reality, but how reality viewed me.

My view on this world is so much different than it was a few years ago. I see a lot more of the good in the world. I\’ve changed in ways I can\’t even articulate, yet I know that it\’s a fundamental shift in what \”I am\”.

I think I\’ve finally learned that I really know nothing at all. LoL

My Realization

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So I\’ve come to a rather perplexing conclusion about my Projection practices over the past several months.

I\’ve been listening a lot to spiritual teachers such as Adyashanti, and even the less \”spiritually-inclined\” such as Tom Campbell lately… and this is what triggered this particular realization. I feel I\’ve had some significant transformations over just these last couple weeks that lead me in this direction.

I\’ve found that the more I\’ve been delving into my spiritual side… the more I\’ve been growing… an the less active I am in actively practicing astral projection.

For example, I really doesn\’t bother me if I project anymore, it\’s simply phased out as a desire within myself. I tried practicing this morning because I had the day off work, and I found myself not really caring if I projected or not. Not because I was lazy or anything, but because I genuinely had no \”want\”… that\’s not to say I don\’t project anymore, I have enough spontaneous projections that happen to me now, they almost seem to be happening on their own accord now and with greater frequency too.

Is anyone else finding this? As you experience the non-physical more and more, your attention is drawn more and more to the physical? Everyone goes through a cycle from time to time where they lose interest in projection and then one day pick it up again… this isn\’t it. I\’m well versed in that particular cycle, as I\’ve gone through it many times prior. This is more a fundamental shift in being *me… or more appropriately, it\’s a fundamental shift in my *being*.

That\’s not to say I\’m not going to continue sharing my thoughts and ideas here on my website or anything crazy like that… hehe Although, I think my posting might \”open up\” a bit to take on more of a spiritual turn and I guess I\’ll finally able to fully utilize my website name: Unlimited Boundaries. I knew I chose it for a reason… because it was quite limiting only talking about Astral Projection. LOL